Mechanical monolithic sensors for mechanical damping of a suspended mass

In this paper we present the control system we implemented for test the control of a suspended mass using monolithic tunable folded pendulum sensors in the band 0.01 - 100 Hz. The main goal of this experiment is to test the performances of monolithic sensors as main acceleration sensors for application in inertial damping control systems. The main advantages of these sensors with respect to the others are the sensitivity (better than 10-11 m/s2/√(Hz) in the band 0.1 ÷ 10Hz), the large band (0.01 ÷ 100Hz), the tuneability of the resonance frequency (necessary to match the sensors to the suspension mechanics) and the high sensitive integrated laser optical readout, consisting of an optical lever and an interferometer, and a very good immunity to environmental noises. Preliminary results are presented and discussed in this paper together with the planned further developments and improvements of monolithic sensors.