Structural Deformation Monitoring of Flight Vehicles Based on Optical Fiber Sensing Technology:A Review and Future Perspectives

Structural deformation monitoring of flight vehicles based on optical fiber sensing(OFS)technology has been a focus of research in the field of aerospace.After nearly 30 years of research and development,Chinese and international researchers have made significant advances in the areas of theory and methods,technology and systems,and ground experiments and flight tests.These advances have led to the development of OFS technology from the laboratory research stage to the engineering application stage.However,a few problems encountered in practical applications limit the wider application and further development of this technology,and thus urgently require solutions.This paper reviews the history of research on the deformation monitoring of flight vehicles.It examines various aspects of OFS-based deformation monitoring including the main varieties of OFS technology,technical advantages and disadvantages,suitability in aerospace applications,deformation reconstruction algorithms,and typical applications.This paper points out the key unresolved problems and the main evolution paradigms of engineering applications.It further discusses future development directions from the perspectives of an evolution paradigm,standardization,new materials,intelligentization,and collaboration.

Health monitoring by optical fiber sensing technology for rechargeable batteries

With the proposal of a“smart battery,”real-time sensing by rechargeable batteries has become progressively more important in both fundamental research and practical applications.However,many traditional sensing technologies suffer from low sensitivity,large size,and electromagnetic interference problems,rendering them unusable in the harsh and complicated electrochemical environments of batteries.The optical sensor is an alternative approach to realize multiple-parameter,multiple-point measurements simultaneously.Thus,it has garnered significant attention.Through analyzing these measured parameters,the state of interest can be decoded to monitor a battery's health.This review summarizes current progress in optical sensing techniques for batteries with respect to various sensing parameters,discussing the current limitations of optical fiber sensors as well as directions for their future development.

The Analysis of Angle Resolution of Stress Vector Sensor Based on Optical Fiber Sensing Cable for High Speed Railway Traffic

With the development of high speed railway traffic, the structure health monitoring for high-speed rail is necessary due to the safety issue. Optical fiber sensing technology is one of the options to solve it. Stress vector information is the important index to make more reasonable judgments about railway safety. However, information sensed by lots of commercial optical sensors is scalar. According to the stress filed distribution of rail, this paper proposes a new type of stress vector sensor based on optical fiber sensing cable(OFSC) with a symmetrical seven optical fibers structure and analyzes the relations between angle resolution and distance between adjacent of optical fibers through finite-element software(ANSYS) simulation. Through reasonable distance configuration, the angle resolution of the OFSC can be improved, and thus stress vector information, including the stress magnitude and the angle of stress, can be more accurately obtained. The simulation results are helpful to configure OFSC for angle resolution improvement in actual practice, and increase the safety factor in high speed railway structure health monitoring.

A hardening load transfer function for rock bolts and its calibration using distributed fiber optic sensing

Confinement of rock bolts by the surrounding rock formation has long been recognized as a positive contributor to the pull-out behavior,yet only a few experimental works and analytical models have been reported,most of which are based on the global rock bolt response evaluated in pull-out tests.This paper presents a laboratory experimental setup aiming to capture the rock formation effect,while using distributed fiber optic sensing to quantify the effect of the confinement and the reinforcement pull-out behavior on a more local level.It is shown that the behavior along the sample itself varies,with certain points exhibiting stress drops with crack formation.Some edge effects related to the kinematic freedom of the grout to dilate are also observed.Regardless,it was found that the mid-level response is quite similar to the average response along the sample.The ability to characterize the variation of the response along the sample is one of the many advantages high-resolution fiber optic sensing allows in such investigations.The paper also offers a plasticity-based hardening load transfer function,representing a"slice"of the anchor.The paper describes in detail the development of the model and the calibration/determination of its parameters.The suggested model captures well the coupled behavior in which the pull-out process leads to an increase in the confining stress due to dilative behavior.

Feasibility study on sinkhole monitoring with fiber optic strain sensing nerves

Anthropogenic activity-induced sinkholes pose a serious threat to building safety and human life nowadays.Real-time detection and early warning of sinkhole formation are a key and urgent problem in urban areas.This paper presents an experimental study to evaluate the feasibility of fiber optic strain sensing nerves in sinkhole monitoring.Combining the artificial neural network(ANN)and particle image velocimetry(PIV)techniques,a series of model tests have been performed to explore the relationship between strain measurements and sinkhole development and to establish a conversion model from strain data to ground settlements.It is demonstrated that the failure mechanism of the soil above the sinkhole developed from a triangle failure plane to a vertical failure plane with increasing collapse volume.Meanwhile,the soil-embedded fiber optic strain sensing nerves allowed deformation monitoring of the ground soil in real time.Furthermore,the characteristics of the measured strain profiles indicate the locations of sinkholes and the associated shear bands.Based on the strain data,the ANN model predicts the ground settlement well.Additionally,micro-anchored fiber optic cables have been proven to increase the soil-to-fiber strain transfer efficiency for large deformation monitoring of ground collapse.

Deformation and failure characteristics of sandstone under uniaxial compression using distributed fiber optic strain sensing

This paper investigates the deformation and fracture propagation of sandstone specimen under uniaxial compression using the distributed fiber optic strain sensing(DFOSS)technology.It shows that the DFOSS-based circumferential strains are in agreement with the data monitored with the traditional strain gage.The DFOSS successfully scans the full-field view of axial and circumferential strains on the specimen surface.The spatiotemporal strain measurement based on DFOSS manifests crack closure and elastoplastic deformation,detects initialization of microcrack nucleation,and identifies strain localization within the specimen.The DFOSS well observes the effects of rock heterogeneity on rock deformation.The advantage of DFOSS-based strain acquisition includes the high spatiotemporal resolution of signals and the ability of full-surface strain scanning.The introduction to the DFOSS technology yields a better understanding of the rock damage process under uniaxial compression.

Preparation and Properties of Fiber Optic Oxygen Sensing Material by Thermo-polymerization Method

A new kind of fiber optic oxygen sensing material based on the fluorescence quenching of Ru（bpy）3Cl2 was prepared by the themo-polymerization method. The ruthenium dye was immobilized in N, N-methylene bisacrylamide（MBBA） polymer by physically trapping while MBBA was covalently crosslinked on the glass micro-beads by NaHSO3-O2-MnSO4 initiator system. The lock-in amplifyication technology was used for the detection of their sensing properties. The influences of indicator concentration, glass micro-beads diameter, post polymerization time, concentration and reaction time of glutaraldehyde on the properties of sensing materials were studied. To optimize the influencing factors to the sensing materials, the indicator concentration of 0.7 g/L, glass micro-beads diameter of 0.3 mm, post polymerization time of 5 h were achieved. The immobilization stability of ruthenium dye and the performance of the sensing materials were improved by the new polymerization system. An absolute detection limit of 3×10-6 （V/V） and the response time of 10 s were obtained. This kind of sensing materials has good stability and their life time is 2 years.

RESEARCH ON TRANSVERSE STRESS CHARACTER OF SINGLE MODE OPTICAL FIBER

This paperdetails experimental work done to quantify stress measurements made optically utilizing ordinary single mode optical fibers. Strain-induced changes of birefringence for ordinary single mode optical fiber responses are characterized against standard stress measurements in a well understand configuration. The experimental scheme for this work and the results are presented in detaial. In this paper, POssible applications for this transverse stress character of single mode fibers are also proposed.

Experiment Study of Fiber Optic Sensing in Railway Security Monitoring

Aiming at some security problems in railway running and the application condition of existing technology, this paper studies some issues of using fiber optic sensing technology in railway security monitoring. Through field experiment measuring the strain of the rail and analyzing the experiment data, the method of diagnosing the health condition of rail and wheel is investigated.

Towards a fast and stable tachypnea monitor:a C_(60)-Lys enabled optical fiber sensor for humidity tracking in breath progress

The pandemic of respiratory diseases enlightened people that monitoring respiration has promising prospects in averting many fatalities by tracking the development of diseases.However,the response speed of current optical fiber sensors is still insufficient to meet the requirements of high-frequency respiratory detection during respiratory failure.Here,a scheme for a fast and stable tachypnea monitor is proposed utilizing a water-soluble C_(60)-Lys ion compound as functional material for the tracking of humidity change in the progression of breath.The polarization of C_(60)-Lys can be tuned by the ambient relative humidity change,and an apparent refractive index alteration can be detected due to the small size effect.In our experiments,C_(60)-Lys is conformally and uniformly deposited on the surface of a tilted fiber Bragg grating(TFBG)to fabricate an ultra-fast-response,high-sensitivity,and long-term stable optical fiber humidity sensor.A relative humidity(RH)detecting sensitivity of 0.080 dB/%RH and the equilibrium response time and recovery time of 1.85 s and 1.58 s are observed,respectively.Also,a linear relation is detected between the resonance intensity of the TFBG and the environment RH.In a practical breath monitoring experiment,the instantaneous response time and recovery time are measured as 40 ms and 41 ms,respectively,during a 1.5 Hz fast breath process.Furthermore,an excellent time stability and high repeatability are exhibited in experiments conducted over a range of 7 days.

Distributed multicore fiber sensors

Multicore fiber(MCF)which contains more than one core in a single fiber cladding has attracted ever increasing attention for application in optical sensing systems owing to its unique capability of independent light transmission in multiple spatial channels.Different from the situation in standard single mode fiber(SMF),the fiber bending gives rise to tangential strain in off-center cores,and this unique feature has been employed for directional bending and shape sensing,where strain measurement is achieved by using either fiber Bragg gratings(FBGs),optical frequency-domain reflectometry(OFDR)or Brillouin distributed sensing technique.On the other hand,the parallel spatial cores enable space-division multiplexed(SDM)system configuration that allows for the multiplexing of multiple distributed sensing techniques.As a result,multi-parameter sensing or performance enhanced sensing can be achieved by using MCF.In this paper,we review the research progress in MCF based distributed fiber sensors.Brief introductions of MCF and the multiplexing/de-multiplexing methods are presented.The bending sensitivity of off-center cores is analyzed.Curvature and shape sensing,as well as various SDM distributed sensing using MCF are summarized,and the working principles of diverse MCF sensors are discussed.Finally,we present the challenges and prospects of MCF for distributed sensing applications.

Research on transmission character of side polished fiber

Transmission characteristics of the side polished fiber were studied by experimental method.The side polished fibers with different depth and length were implemented,and the corresponding wavelength dependent loss was measured.Based on wheel fabrication,the side polished fibers were achieved with the low insertion loss and cost.Meanwhile,they can be artificially controlled for the use of evanescent field area and easy to system integration.

A Novel Temperature-Compensated, Intensity-Modulated Fiber Bragg Grating Sensor System

An intensity-modulated, fiber Bragg grating （FBG） sensor system based on radio-frequency （RF） signal measurement is presented. The RF signal is generated at a photodetector by two modulated optical signals reflected from the sensing FBG and a reference one. Bragg wavelength shift of the sensing FBG changes intensity of the RF signal by changing phase difference between the two optical signals, with temperature effect being compensated automatically by the reference FBG, Strain measurement with a maximum sensitivity of -0.34 μV/με has been achieved.

Pure Bending Characteristic of Tilted Fiber Bragg Grating

a novel structure of the pure macro- bending sensor based on the tilted fiber Bragg grating （TFBG） is proposed. The TFBG located in the half circle with the different diameters is bent at a constant angle with respect to the tilted grating planes. With the variations of the curvature, the core-mode resonance is unchanged and the transmission power of cladding modes detected by the photodiodes varies linearly with curvature, while the ghost mode changes by the form of two-order polynomial. So we can use the transmission power of ghost mode or other cladding modes to detect bending curvature as shape sensor. From a practical point of view, the sensor proposed here is simple, low cost and easy to implement. Moreover, it is possible to make a temperature-insensitive shape sensor due to the same temperature characteristic between the core mode and the cladding modes.

Experimental study on the deformation and failure mechanism of overburden rock during coal mining using a comprehensive intelligent sensing method

Understanding the spatiotemporal evolution of overburden deformation during coal mining is still a challenge in engineering practice due to the limitation of monitoring techniques. Taking the Yangliu Coal Mine as an example, a similarity model test was designed and conducted to investigate the deformation and failure mechanism of overlying rocks in this study. Distributed fiber optic sensing(DFOS), highdensity electrical resistivity tomography(HD-ERT) and close-range photogrammetry(CRP) technologies were used in the test for comprehensive analyses. The combined use of the three methods facilitates the investigation of the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics of overburden deformation, showing that the mining-induced deformation of overburden strata was a dynamic evolution process. This process was accompanied by the formation, propagation, closure and redevelopment of separation cracks.Moreover, the key rock stratum with high strength and high-quality lithology played a crucial role in the whole process of overburden deformation. There were generally three failure modes of overburden rock layers, including bending and tension, overall shearing, and shearing and sliding. Shear failure often leads to overburden falling off in blocks, which poses a serious threat to mining safety. Therefore, realtime and accurate monitoring of overburden deformation is of great significance for the safe mining of underground coal seams.

On-Chip Sub-Picometer Continuous Wavelength Fiber-Bragg-Grating Interrogator

Miniaturized fiber-Bragg-grating(FBG)interrogators are of interest for applications in the areas where weight and size controlling is important,e.g.,airplanes and aerospace or in-situ monitoring.An ultra-compact high-precision on-chip interrogator is proposed based on a tailored arrayed waveguide grating(AWG)on a silicon-on-insulator(SOI)platform.The on-chip interrogator enables continuous wavelength interrogation from 1544 nm to 1568 nm with the wavelength accuracy of less than 1 pm[the root-mean-square error(RMSE)is 0.73 pm]over the whole wavelength range.The chip loss is less than 5 dB.The 1×16 AWG is optimized to achieve a large bandwidth and a low noise level at each channel,and the FBG reflection peaks can be detected by multiple output channels of the AWG.The fabricated AWG is utilized to interrogate FBG sensors through the center of gravity(CoG)algorithm.The validation of an on-chip FBG interrogator that works with sub-picometer wavelength accuracy in a broad wavelength range shows large potential for applications in miniaturized fiber optic sensing systems.

Research on the Surface Subsidence Monitoring Technology Based on Fiber Bragg Grating Sensing

In order to monitor the process of surface subsidence caused by mining in real time, we reported two types of fiber Bragg grating （FBG） based sensors. The principles of the FBG-based displacement sensor and the FBG-based micro-seismic sensor were described. The surface subsidence monitoring system based on the FBG sensing technology was designed. Some factual application of using these FBG-based sensors for subsidence monitoring in iron mines was presented.

Ultra-high resolution strain sensor network assisted with an LS-SVM based hysteresis model

Optical fiber sensor network has attracted considerable research interests for geoscience applications.However,the sensor capacity and ultra-low frequency noise limits the sensing performance for geoscience data acquisition.To achieve a high-resolution and lager sensing capacity,a strain sensor network is proposed based on phase-sensitive op-tical time domain reflectometer(φ-OTDR)technology and special packaged fiber with scatter enhanced points(SEPs)ar-ray.Specifically,an extra identical fiber with SEPs array which is free of strain is used as the reference fiber,for com-pensating the ultra-low frequency noise in theφ-OTDR system induced by laser source frequency shift and environment temperature change.Moreover,a hysteresis operator based least square support vector machine(LS-SVM)model is in-troduced to reduce the compensation residual error generated from the thermal hysteresis nonlinearity between the sensing fiber and reference fiber.In the experiment,the strain sensor network possesses a sensing capacity with 55 sensor elements.The phase bias drift with frequency below 0.1 Hz is effectively compensated by LS-SVM based hyster-esis model,and the signal to noise ratio(SNR)of a strain vibration at 0.01 Hz greatly increases by 24 dB compared to that of the sensing fiber for direct compensation.The proposed strain sensor network proves a high dynamic resolution of 10.5 pε·Hz-1/2 above 10 Hz,and ultra-low frequency sensing resolution of 166 pεat 0.001 Hz.It is the first reported a large sensing capacity strain sensor network with sub-nεsensing resolution in mHz frequency range,to the best of our knowledge.

Asymmetrical tapered SMS fiber coupler for simultaneous measurement of temperature and refractive index and its application for biosensing

An asymmetrical tapered singlemode–multimode–singlemode(SMS)fiber coupler based on two parallel physical contact SMS fiber structures was proposed.Since the coupler includes modes both from fiber core and cladding,two dips of the transmission spectrum exhibit different sensing characteristics to the surrounding temperature and refractive index(RI)change,which allows the use of the standard matrix inversion method to determine temperature and RI simultaneously.The temperature sensitivities of 0.0498 and 0.0324 nm/℃ and RI sensitivities of 1151.76 and 1325.66 nm/RIU have been achieved,respectively.For biosensing application,with the functionalized fiber coupler sensor,a human chorionic gonadotropin concentration of 0.05 mIU/mL has been detected for a wavelength shift of 0.2 nm with good stability and excellent selectivity.The developed tapered SMS fiber coupler structure has advantages of simultaneous measurement of two independent parameters,simple configuration,low cost,and good repeatability that offer a great potential for medical diagnostics.

Self-copy-shift-based differential phase extracting method for fiber distributed acoustic sensing

A differential phase extracting method based on self-copy-shift for distributed acoustic sensing is proposed.Heterodyne and optical hybrids are used to realize high signal-to-noise ratio in-phase and quadrature-phase(IQ)signal measurement.The measured signals are self-copied and shifted for certain data points,and then they are digitally mixed with the original signals to construct the differential phase.The four produced signals are then combined to carry out IQ demodulation.An experiment with strain having an amplitude modulation waveform is carried out.The results showed that waveform information can be recovered well,and the signal-tonoise ratio achieves 32.8 dB.