Design, fabrication and experiment of a MEMS piezoresistive high-g accelerometer

High-g accelerometers are widely used in explosion and shock measurement. This paper describes a MEMS piezoresistive high-g accelerometer whose range is more than 50000g. It is designed on the basis of silicon on insulator (SOI) solid piezoresistive chip. The chip has a structure where both ends of the beam are fixed. Through the stress analysis and mode analysis of the accelerometer, the detailed parameters of the structure are established. The experimental results obtained from the drop hammer shock machine test and live-fire test show good properties of the accelerometer such as good output characteristic, repeatability and fast response speed. Therefore, the accelerometer in this paper meets the requirement of explosion and shock measurement basically.