High-Tc Superconducting Accelerometer

Ultra-high resolution accelerometer is required in completing the high precision airplane inertial navigation system employing a gravity gradiometer which compensates the geodetic induced error and is also required in micro-g environment in space. The resolution of the conventional accelerometer is limited in the order of 10-6gE. On the contrary, superconducting accelerometer has the potential of 10"12gE. In National Aerospace Laboratory (NAL), a principle model of a high-To superconducting accelerometer operated at the liquid nitrogen temperature (77K) was designed, manufactured and evaluated and some of the characteristics are described in this paper.