April 09, 2010, 1100 Webb

Vibratory gyros rely on the Coriolis-coupling of two lightly damped modes when the sensor’s equations of motion are written in case-fixed coordinates. The highest sensor signal-to-noise ratio is achieved when the two modes are degenerate, i.e. the modal frequencies are equal. The first portion of the seminar will discuss various systematic tuning methods using stiffness and mass matrix perturbation to achieve, for all intents and purposes, modal degeneracy. The remainder of the talk will discuss the noise analysis of the closed-loop mode of operation and dispel the myth that closing the loop leads to inferior performance of the integrated rate when compared to the open-loop case.

Robert M’Closkey is Professor and Vice Chair for Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UCLA. He received his PhD from Caltech in 1995 in the area of non-holonomic control systems. For the last 10 years he has been collaborating with researchers from Boeing, HRL Laboratories and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the development of inertial sensors for aerospace applications. His other academic interests include the analytical and experimental aspects of controlling jets injected into cross-flows.