Practical design of a liquid rate gyroscope using an electro-conjugate fluid

An electro-conjugate fluid (ECF) is a kind of dielectric fluid that works as a functional/smart fluid generating a powerful jet flow (ECF jet) when subjected to a high d.c. voltage. The authors previously proposed the first liquid rate gyroscope in the world using ECF. The ECF liquid rate gyroscope proposed uses the drift of the ECF jet due to the Coriolis force when an angular motion is applied. The contribution of the proposed concept to gyroscope technology is that it provides the possibility of a low-cost micro gyroscope with inherent robustness to external impact. To move beyond a mere laboratory curiosity, the present paper describes the practical design of an ECF liquid rate gyroscope and characterizes the prototype. The ECF liquid rate gyroscope developed in this study has a scale factor, range of detection, resolution, and linearity of 32mV/(°/s), ±400°/s, 0.04°/s, and 2 per cent of full scale (with a range of ±60°/s), respectively. These results show that the ECF liquid rate gyroscope could possibly become the next generation standard of micro gyroscopes.