A silicon micromachined six-degree of freedom piezoresistive accelerometer

This paper presents a miniaturized piezoresistive six-degree of freedom (6DOF) accelerometer utilizing a highly symmetric quad-beam structure with symmetrically bonded identical two seismic masses. The FEM simulations of static and modal analysis were performed to optimize structural parameters and analyze the mechanical response at accelerations of different directions. The accelerometer is capable of measuring three components of linear acceleration and three components of angular acceleration on three orthogonal axes up to /spl plusmn/10 g in the frequency bandwidth of 300 Hz. Comparison of the obtained experimental results and finite element simulation shows good agreement. The sensor is ideal for use in biomechanical research applications such as study of human gesture recognition systems.