Multi-point strain measurement using FBG-OTDR optical fiber sensor

Saruta, Koichi   ; Kobayashi, Takao*

Fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) are one of the promising sensor elements for structural health monitoring due to multi-point sensing capability of strain with a high sensitivity and spatial resolution. While current FBG strain sensors based on wavelength domain have been established and found a variety of applications, the number of FBGs in a single sensing arm is in practice limited up to several tens. This number of FBGs is insufficient to develop effective structural health monitoring systems by taking full advantage of multiplex capability of FBG sensors. We report a design and experimental demonstration of FBG strain sensor based on optical-time domain reflectometry (FBG-OTDR). In the presented method strain is measured as a change in the optical power reflected from FBGs, and each FBG signal is separated in time domain. Thus the number of FBGs is not limited by the spectrum range of the light source and the grating bandwidth. The experimental results show that 50 sensing points in a single sensing arm can be measured with an rms error of less than 1 microstrain.