A low frequency horizontal active vibration isolation bench for testing the performance of high-precision space inertial sensors

High-precision space inertial sensors are one of the most important payloads in satellite Earth's gravity measurement and space-based gravitational wave detection due to their extremely high sensitivity. However, seismic noise affects its terrestrial-based performance validation, so that it is very significant to develop low frequency horizontal vibration isolation system to suppress the impact of seismic noise. In this article, a horizontal active vibration isolation bench for terrestrial-based investigation of space accelerometer is developed, on which the motion in three dimensions is monitored by two tri-axis seismometers and actively controlled by three voice coil motors. The principle and potential performance of this bench are theoretically analyzed and estimated in details. The experimental result shows that the bench can achieve high vibration isolation performance in horizontal translation direction. The residual horizontal vibration noise of this bench due to seismic can be suppressed by about 40 dB at 0.35 Hz. Finally, the potential of this design as a vibration pre-isolation stage to investigate the performance of the inertial sensors dedicated to satellite gravity measurement and space gravitational wave detection is discussed.