Design of a high-sensitivity micromechanical resonant accelerometer with a two-stage microlever

A novel micromechanical silicon resonant accelerometer with a two-stage microlever mechanism and dual-proofmass architecture was presented to achieve a higher sensitivity and stability. According to the mechanical model of the two-stage microlever, the ANSYS simulations were performed to analyze the effects of structural parameters, including lever structure dimensions and the ratio of lever power arm to lever resisting arm, on the scale factor and the operating modal frequency of accelerometer. Furthermore, the dual-proofmass architecture effectively removed the "blind zone" resulted from a "lock-in" phenomenon at the crossing frequency. In consideration of the tradeoff of the acceleration sensitivity and the operating modal frequency of 1.2 kHz, the designed accelerometer achieved a sensitivity of 430 Hz/g and a linear accuracy of 5 parts per thousand with a nominal resonant frequency of 22482 Hz in the range of +/-30 g.