Inertial System Technology
XIA Gang
In modern military applications, the main function of long-range missiles is to accurately strike pivotal military targets, which makes guidance precision a chiefly performance measure of missiles. Nowadays, the central inertial instruments used for long-range guidance weapons interiorly and overseas is inertial navigation platforms(INPs). The INP frame could rotate the inertial measurement unit(IMU) to realize self-alignment and self-calibration before missiles launching. During the flight of missiles, the INP stabilize the IMU in inertial space to improve the accuracy of inertial instruments by isolating the angular motion, which makes INPs become most preferred inertial instrument for long-range guidance system. Domestic INP technology has been developing since 1960s, and has experienced the development of ball bearing gyroscope platforms, air-floating gyroscope platforms, dynamically tuned gyroscope platforms, liquid-floating gyroscope platforms, and three-floating gyroscope platforms. At recent, the new types of long-range missile mainly adopt three-floating gyroscope INPs based on three-floating gyroscopes and gyroscope accelerometers. The key technologies of three-floating gyroscope INPs include sub-micron machining and assembly of special materials, high-reliability three-floating inertial instrument technology against high overload environments, inertial/astronomical integrated guidance, and INPs self-alignment and self-calibration technology. In recent years, the engineering application precision of novel inertial instruments, represented by optical gyroscopes and hemispherical resonator gyroscopes has gradually improved. Based on the INPs stability control technology, constructing novel structures of INPs using new types of solid-state gyroscopes will rapidly promote the development of domestic long-range weapons. By analyzing the technical advantages of fiber optical gyroscopes, hemispherical resonator gyroscopes and other novel inertial instruments, considering the performance requirements for miniaturization, digitalization, and intelligence of the future guidance systems, several suggestions are proposed to develop domestic INP technology.