Effect of geometric and material properties on Thermoelastic Damping (TED) of 3D hemispherical inertial resonator

Abstract

High quality factor (Q-factor) is a crucial parameter for the development of precision inertial resonators. Q-factor indicates efficiency of a resonator in retaining its energy during oscillations. This paper explores the effects of different design parameters on Q-factor of a 3D hemispherical (wine-glass) inertial resonator. Thermo-elastic damping (TED) loss mechanisms in a 3D non-inverted wine-glass (hemispherical) shell resonator is systematically investigated and presented in this paper. We investigated TED loss resulting from the effects of hemisphere geometric parameters (such as thickness, height, and radius), mass imbalance, thickness non-uniformity, and edge defects. We used glassblowing to fabricate hemispherical 3D shell resonators. The results presented in this paper can facilitate selecting efficient geometric and material properties for achieving desired Q-factor in 3D inertial resonators. Enhancing the Q-factor in MEMS based 3D resonators can further enable the development of high precision resonators and gyroscopes