Transient test of suspension electronics for gyroscope

The rotor suspension electronics of an electrostatic gyro suspension system is required to perform flawlessly to sustain the life of the gyro. Transient abnormalities as short as one millisecond duration will cause the spinning rotor to come in contact with the surrounding electrodes and result in destruction of the gyro. Thus, not infrequently after a catastrophic dropped rotor incident no trace of the fault is evident upon ensuing check of the system. To remedy this problem a built in test (BIT) system is used to provide fault isolation. The test circuitry is built into the navigation system electronics and integrated with the system program. The fault isolation electronics comprise sensor circuits to monitor functional subdivisions of the electronic suspension system for signal abnormality and a processing circuit which receives the sensor circuit outputs and identifies the primary source of the fault. The faults are detected and the source is flagged at the time of occurrance. The output of the fault isolation electronics is a latched coded readout which is fed to the navigation computer for memory storage and any appropriate follow-up system action, such as power shutdown. After initialization by the computer, the fault isolation function is an automatic operation by the electronic circuitry.