Energy trapping of thickness-shear vibrations excited by parallel electric field and its application to piezoelectric vibratory gyroscopes

The energy trapping of thickness shear vibrations, which are excited by parallel electric field in a partially polarized piezoelectric ceramic plate, is studied, and the mechanism of energy trapping is theoretically and experimentally clarified. A new piezoelectric vibratory gyroscope with three electrodes using the energy trapping of thickness-shear vibrations is proposed and experimental results are presented. The results show that high reliability vibratory gyroscopes with the ease in mechanical support can be realized because of the energy trapping effect. A detection sensitivity of 2.8 mV/deg/sec is obtained.