Finite Element Modeling of Optical Path Length Control Device for Laser Gyroscope

Optical path length variations due to temperature, manufacturing misalignments, operation environments can affect the performance of ring laser gyroscope (RLG). This paper presents a structural design of optical path length control device (PLC) using finite element analysis. The static analysis and harmonic response analysis of the PLC is performed to investigate the deformation on different voltage, and model analysis is selected to determine the natural frequency and eigenmodes. To validate the simulation results, an experiment on RLG with mode-scanning is carried out and the maximum errors are within 0.025um. The experiment results are found to be in good agreement with the simulation results. The results indicate that the finite element model can be beneficial to designing and optimizing the structural parameters for the PLC.