A Calibration Scheme With Combination of the Optical Shaft Encoder and Laser Triangulation Sensor for Low-Frequency Angular Acceleration Rotary Table

A low-frequency angular acceleration rotary table (LFAART) is capable of sinusoidal motion around a fixed position and essential to verify dynamic characteristics of a gyroscope device. The table’s performance at different swinging frequencies and amplitudes needs to be calibrated to realize traceability. However, there has been little research on the LFAART calibration. Besides, the existing measurement methods of sinusoidal angular motion parameters are not adequate for the needs of the LFAART calibration in terms of measurement range, precision, and feasibility. This article presents a calibration scheme combining an optical shaft encoder and a laser triangulation sensor. When the rotation amplitude covers sufficient slots of the scale grating, the optical shaft encoder is applied, while the laser triangulation sensor is used for a tiny amplitude motion. An algorithm is proposed to accurately calculate the angular acceleration amplitude and frequency of the rotation utilizing sinusoidal phase-modulated signals of the optical shaft encoder output. Singular zero-crossings of the series are discarded, and intervals of reversing moments are recognized according to the signal derivative’s sign at remaining zero-crossings. Then intervals are divided into subintervals to obtain accurate reversing moments. Finally, angular displacements between two adjacent reversing moments are estimated based on the fringe counting method, and the amplitude and frequency are calculated. The measurement uncertainty analysis and experiment demonstrate that the calibration scheme, including the algorithm, possesses high accuracy and resolution, wide range, and good operability, which perfectly solves the rotation’s angular acceleration amplitude and frequency.