The effect of thermoelastic damping on the total Q-factor of state-of-the-art MEMS gyroscopes with complex beam-like suspensions

We present a comprehensive study of thermoelastic damping (TED) in state-of-the-art MEMS gyroscopes with beam-like suspensions under varying ambient temperatures. Three different modeling approaches have been implemented in a standard software environment (COMSOL Multiphysics) and compared with respect to accuracy, consistency and feasibility for fast design studies. By applying all three approaches, temperature-dependent Q-factors calculated for various designs of interest show congruent results proving the reliability of the simulations. Nevertheless, the theoretically determined values remain too high to explain the measured data by TED. As an additional result, it turned out that - under specific conditions - a simplified analytical model can be derived and applied successfully also to complex spring geometries, so as to produce a simple "rule of thumb" for first estimations and considerations in early stages of the design process.