Open AccessType B Uncertainty Analysis of Gravity-Based Determinations of Triaxial-Accelerometer Properties by Simulation of Measurement Errors
Author(s) -
Jon Geist,
Michael Gaitan
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of research of the national institute of standards and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.202
H-Index - 59
eISSN - 2165-7254
pISSN - 1044-677X
DOI - 10.6028/jres.126.038
Subject(s) - accelerometer , sensitivity (control systems) , calibration , gimbal , matrix (chemical analysis) , rotation (mathematics) , diagonal , acceleration , physics , acoustics , control theory (sociology) , mathematics , computer science , classical mechanics , geometry , materials science , engineering , electronic engineering , quantum mechanics , composite material , control (management) , artificial intelligence
We simulated the effects of gimbal-alignment errors and rotational step-size errors on measurements of the sensitivity matrix andintrinsic properties of a triaxial accelerometer. We restricted the study to measurements carried out on a two-axis calibration systemusing a previously described measurement and analysis protocol. As well as imperfections in the calibration system, we simulatedimperfect orthogonality of the accelerometer axes and non-identical sensitivity of the individual accelerometers in an otherwise perfecttriaxial accelerometer, but we left characterization of other accelerometer imperfections such as non-linearity for future study. Withinthis framework, sensitivity-matrix errors are caused by imperfections in the construction and installation of the accelerometercalibration system, but not by the accelerometer imperfections included in the simulations. We use the results of this study to assigntype B uncertainties to the components of the sensitivity matrix and related intrinsic properties due to imperfections in the measurementsystem. For calibrations using a reasonably well manufactured and installed multi-axis rotation stage such as that studied in this paper,we estimated upper bounds to the standard uncertainties of the order of 1 ×10−5 , 2 ×10−5 , 2 ×10−4 , and 5 ×10−5 for the intrinsicsensitivities, diagonal elements of the sensitivity matrix, off-diagonal elements of the sensitivity matrix, and zero-acceleration offsets,relative to a sensitivity-matrix element of 1, respectively, and 5 ×10−3 degrees for the intrinsic angles