TABLE OF CONTENTS The evaluation testing of inertial sensors is required to establish their suitability for a given application, that is, to ensure that they satisfy all the performance requirements of that application.
Inertial sensors and systems are designed and manufactured for a very wide range of applications which include the provision of extremely precise navigation, in ships and submarines, for example, to measurements for flight control of short time of flight missiles. The performance required for such diverse applications spans eight or nine orders of magnitude. Similarly, the environment in which the sensors and system are required to operate varies widely, from the potentially more benign maritime applications to the very high dynamic forces experienced by highly agile surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles travelling at supersonic or hypersonic speeds.
The testing and calibration methods need to reflect the type of application and also, but very importantly, the environment in which the sensors and systems are to operate. It is crucial to establish that the sensors not only survive and operate reliably whilst being subjected to the vibrations, shocks and accelerations induced by the host vehicle, but also have sufficient endurance and resistance to survive the testing and calibration procedures.
It is possible to represent the behaviour or performance of an inertial sensor by use of a mathematical expression, as described in Chapters 4 6. One purpose of testing an inertial sensor is to evaluate the coefficients of these equations, the various 'error' terms, so that the performance of a sensor can be...
