Shock resistance of ferromagnetic micromechanical magnetometers

We have designed, fabricated, and tested ferromagnetic micromechanical magnetometers and have characterized their shock resistance. The magnetometer design is similar to a compass consisting of a ferromagnetic plate and a pair of torsion beams. The sensitivity of the magnetometer increases as the length of the torsion beams increases. Intuitively, one might expect that longer beams will make the magnetometer less shock resistant, but the experimental results reported have revealed that this is not the case. To investigate this phenomenon, two different theoretical models are developed, analyzed, and compared to finite-element simulations and experimental results. © 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.