Acceleration sensitivities of surface acoustic waves propagating on a cantilever quartz beam

Abstract

High accuracy quartz accelerometers are built on the principle of an electronic servoloop circuit. We study the performance of open loop quartz accelerometers which have surface acoustic wave (SAW) delay lines (or resonator) as sensitive component mounted in an oscillator. Sensitivities versus bending forces and compression force are calculated as a function of quartz crystal anisotropy. Comparison with experimental values obtained with SAW oscillator shows that transverse acceleration has a very low sensitivity for single rotated cut (Y±θ).