A New Fine Damping Method for Solid ESG Rotor

For the electrostatically suspended gyro(ESG) with solid rotor, because the equatorial photoelectric sensor won't sense the equatorial marking line and output the correct damping control information when the nutation angle is small, the active damping with equatorial marking line will bring considerable error. The passive damping method by applying strong DC magnetic field requires too much time. So an active damping method by longitude marking lines is proposed to fulfill the fine damping for solid ESG rotor. The shape of rotor marking lines and the principle of fine damping are introduced. The simulation results prove that this fine damping method can effectively solve the problem of damping error introduced by active damping with equatorial marking line. The estimating results for damping time indicate that the fine damping time is less than 10 percent of passive damping time.