Improvement of the ultra-low-frequency active vertical vibration isolator with geometric anti-spring structure for absolute gravimetry

For absolute gravimeters, which play important roles in geophysics and geological exploration, an ultra-low-frequency vertical vibration isolator is necessary to achieve the required measurement precision. A novel active vibration isolator that uses a geometric anti-spring (GAS) structure has been proposed by our team at Tsinghua University previously, but its performance is mainly limited by the large-scale drift in the detection signal of the system. In this paper, after a brief theoretical introduction to the overall system, recent improvements in this novel vibration isolator are presented. The main improvements to the isolator are the use of new blades in the GAS structure and the addition of an extra compensation circuit to eliminate the drift. The improved prototype has a resonance period of 29.2 s and a continuous working time of several days, as compared with the resonance period of 19.2 s and a working time lasting only several minutes of the previous prototype. Experiments show that the improved prototype performs well in the homemade T-1 laser-interferometry absolute gravimeter. The standard error of the mean (SEM) of a 50-drop measurement performed in Tsinghua University is reduced significantly from 404 μGal (1 μGal = 1 × 10−8 m s−2) without the vibration isolator to 10.8 μGal with the improved prototype at its best level. Additionally, the SEM of a 50-set measurement (including 800 drops) lasting for 25 h achieves 5.9 μGal with the improved prototype.