Abstract:We study temperature characteristic of Burris relative gravimeters, employing three gravimeters which have cooled for different times. After cooling about one month in a basement where temperature is about 14 ℃, one Burris gravimeter did not reach a constant temperature point, when the tips of bad temperature disappear, until the meter was heated 125 minutes. The zero drift rates were larger than 0.005×10-5 m·s-2/h after 65 hours and smaller than 0.003×10-5 m·s-2/h after 110 hours from the beginning of heating. After the three gravimeters cooled 15 minutes, 2 hours and 24 hours, the gravimeters show that the temperature reading sharply falls and then slightly increases and falls before the reading is stable, and the absolute change rate also decreases and then increases and decreases again. The measurement indicates that the reading is not stable until the gravimeter is heated after one hour when the gravimeter is powered off 15 minutes. In the process of heating-up, the reading sharply changes after the gravimeter reads a constant point and the minimum of reading change appears after the temperature of the meter is stable. The study indicates that the measurement precision of one of three gravimeters decreases compared with its past.