Mechanical Dither Design for Ring Laser Gyroscope

The gyroscopes have been used as a suitable inertial instrument for the navigation guidance and attitude controls. The accuracy as very sensitive sensor is limited by the lock-in region (dead band) by the frequency coupling between two counter-propagating waves at low rotation rates. This frequency coupling gives no phase difference and an angular increment is not detected. This problem can be overcome by the mechanical dithering. The purpose of the mechanical dithering is to suppress the dead band, oscillate the monoblock about the rotation axis and add an external rotation rate. This paper presents the theoretical considerations of the mechanical performances of dither on the basis of the loading condition and angular characteristics due to the piezoelement deformation and the validity of theoretical equations are compared through FEM (Finite Element Method) simulations.