Fiber optic monitoring of an anti-slide pile in a retrogressive landslide

Anti-slide piles are one of the most important reinforcement structures against landslides,and evalu-ating the working conditions is of great significance for landslide mitigation.The widely adopted analytical methods of pile internal forces include cantilever beam method and elastic foundation beam method.However,due to many assumptions involved in calculation,the analytical models cannot be fully applicable to complex site situations,e.g.landslides with multi-sliding surfaces and pile-soil interface separation as discussed herein.In view of this,the combination of distributed fiber optic sensing(DFOS)and strain-internal force conversion methods was proposed to evaluate the working conditions of an anti-sliding pile in a typical retrogressive landslide in the Three Gorges reservoir area,China.Brillouin optical time domain reflectometry(BOTDR)was utilized to monitor the strain distri-bution along the pile.Next,by analyzing the relative deformation between the pile and its adjacent inclinometer,the pile-soil interface separation was profiled.Finally,the internal forces of the anti-slide pile were derived based on the strain-internal force conversion method.According to the ratio of calculated internal forces to the design values,the working conditions of the anti-slide pile could be evaluated.The results demonstrated that the proposed method could reveal the deformation pattern of the anti-slide pile system,and can quantitatively evaluate its working conditions.

DFOS Applications to Geo-Engineering Monitoring

Optical fiber sensing technology has developed rapidly since the 1980s with the development of the optical fiber and fiber optical communication technology.It is a new type of sensing technology that uses light as a carrier and optical fiber as a medium to sense and transmit external signals(measurands).Distributed fiber optical sensors(DFOS)can continuously measure the external physical parameters distributed along the geometric path of the optical fiber.Meanwhile,the spatial distribution and change information of the measured physical parameters over time can be obtained.This technology has unmatched advantages over traditional point-wise and electrical measurement monitoring technologies.This paper summarizes the state-of-the-art research of the application of the distributed optical fiber sensing tech no logy in geo-engineering in the past 10 years,mainly including the advantages of DFOS,the challenges in geo-engineering monitoring,related fundamental theoretical issues,sensing performance of the optical sensing cables,distributed optical fiber monitoring system for geo-engineering,and applications of optical fiber sensing technology in geo-engineering.