Design and simulation of MEMS-based dual-axis fluidic angular velocity sensor

In this paper, we present the design and simulation of a microelectromechanical system (MEMS)-based fluidic angular velocity sensor that can simultaneously detect two components of angular velocity (two degrees of freedom). The sensor includes three layers, in which only the layer containing in-plane hotwire anemometers requires a standard MEMS process with one mask. The other layers can be fabricated using either hot embossing or conventional machining. In the sensor, four jets comprising two perpendicular pairs of flows are generated by a piezoelectric-actuated diaphragm through a valveless network channel. We consider two designs to optimize the angular velocity sensor structure with an objective function relating the output voltage to the angular velocity. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.