Creep characteristics of combined bulk acoustic wave quartz resonator force sensors

摘要

This paper investigates the creep characteristics of a metal-quartz combined force sensor. The sensing quartz resonator is assembled with metal structures by epoxy adhesive to avoid direct-contact induced frequency instability. Creep of the sensor mainly attributes to the existence of epoxy, owing to its viscoelastic feature. In order to probe the factors that affect creep, theoretical and empirical models describing the relations between the creep and surface roughness and preload have been developed, based on the micro-peak model and the autocorrelation function of surface roughness. Experimental results show that with the decrease of the surface roughness or with the increase of the preload, as well as the elasticity of epoxy, the creep of the sensor can be reduced. A polishing method has been developed based on the experiments to reduce creep and improve the performance of the sensor. (C) 2003 Published by Elsevier B.V. [References: 22]