Research on Multi-Ranged Micro Accelerometer

In the process of a physical procedure, there might be more than one accelerations to be measured, for instance, to analyze the forces applied to an object in both its launching and flying procedures, not only the large accelerations (larger than 10,000g) during its launching, but also the small accelerations (smaller than 10g) during its flying procedure should be measured. Therefore, in such a situation, a single micro accelerometer can hardly satisfy the testing requirement. To solve this kind of problems, a multi-ranged micro accelerometer is designed and fabricated. This multi-ranged accelerometer contains four piezoresistive accelerometers, the testing ranges of which are 100g, 500g, 1000g and 2000g, respectively. The design, fabrication and the preliminary testing of this sensor is introduced, besides the structural protection for these low-range sensors in the situation of over-loading is mainly described. Finally, the testing demonstrates that such a multi-ranged sensor has a good linearity, thus it can be used to measure four accelerations within four individual ranges.