A technique to evaluate the good operation of FBG sensors embedded in a carbon fiber beam

Gabriele Cazzulani; Simone Cinquemani; Lorenzo Comolli

doi:10.1117/12.2025858

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20 May 2013 A technique to evaluate the good operation of FBG sensors embedded in a carbon fiber beam

Gabriele Cazzulani, Simone Cinquemani, Lorenzo Comolli

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Proceedings Volume 8794, Fifth European Workshop on Optical Fibre Sensors; 87942S (2013) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2025858
Event: Fifth European Workshop on Optical Fibre Sensors, 2013, Krakow, Poland

Abstract

Embedding FBG sensors in carbon fiber structures is a very attractive solution, due to the small fiber diameter, and the possibility to manufacture arrays of many gratings into a single optical fiber. These embedding is particularly useful for the manufacturing of smart structures, able to improve their characteristics thanks to embedded sensors and actuators. In this work a carbon fiber beam of 3 m length, with an array of 30 FBG sensors and 3 piezoelectric actuators, is described. The focus of the work is on the evaluation of the good operation of embedded FBG sensors, that is not easy due to the microstructure of woven carbon fiber layers, producing non-homogeneous strain field, a well known problem for the reliability of FBG strain measurements. The proposed technique looks at the standard deviation of the full width at -6 dB of the spectra of each FBG sensors, during a quasi-static motion producing quasi-static strains. 37% of the 30 FBG sensors have been found to produce measurements corrupted by a small error. At the end, vibration control of the described structure is shown.

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Gabriele Cazzulani, Simone Cinquemani, and Lorenzo Comolli "A technique to evaluate the good operation of FBG sensors embedded in a carbon fiber beam", Proc. SPIE 8794, Fifth European Workshop on Optical Fibre Sensors, 87942S (20 May 2013); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2025858

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