Abstract
A micromachined silicon accelerometer capable of surviving and detecting very high accelerations(up to 200,000 times the gravitational acceleration) is necessary for a high impact accelerometer for earth-penetration weapons applications. We adopted as a reference model a piezoresistive type silicon micromachined high-shock accelerometer with a bonded hinge structure and performed structural analyses such as stress, modal, and transient dynamic responses and sensor sensitivity simulation for the selected device using piezoresistive-structural coupled-field analysis. In addition, structural optimization was introduced to improve the performances of the accelerometer against the initial design of the reference model. The design objective here was to maximize the sensor sensitivity subject to a set of design constraints on the impact endurance of the structure, dynamic characteristics, the fundamental frequency and the transverse sensitivities by changing the dimensions of the width, sensing beams, and hinges which have significant effects on the performances. Through the optimization, we could increase the sensor sensitivity by more than 70% from the initial value of $0.267{\mu}V/G$ satisfying all the imposed design constraints. The suggested simulation and optimization have been proved very successful to design high impact microaccelerometers and therefore can be easily applied to develop and improve other piezoresistive type sensors and actuators.
