Nowadays fiber optic solutions play a crucial role in information technology. Fiber optic technology promotes the development of advanced fiber optic sensors. These fiber sensors offer numerous benefits that make them very attractive. The benefits include “durability, flexibility, biocompatibility, high sensitivity, and electromagnetic interference immunity.”
The applications of fiber optic sensors consist of numerous fields. They are widely used in medicine, environmental protection, industrial production, and structural health monitoring. Herewith, different types of fiber sensors allow for measuring various physical and chemical parameters. For instance, they sense temperature, acoustic, pressure, humidity, and others.
The production of distributed sensing systems requires different types of fibers. The following types are the most popular: photonic crystal, polarization-maintaining, double-core, sapphire optical fibers, etc. It should be noted that various fiber optic sensors use various measurement principles. Additionally, fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) – the most popular measurement principle.
FBG sensors can also perform multi-parameter measurements to meet the practical demands of scientists. Thus, a team of researchers has demonstrated a cascaded multi-mode FBG sensor that performs the dual-parameter measurement. They apply optical fiber with several modes to create a distributed sensing system. Moreover, the FBG sensors measure the Brillouin frequency shift for temperature and strain sensing.
To be more precise, these FBG sensors have a hybrid structure (FBGs and FPI) with a nano-silica diaphragm on the tip. Besides, the total length of the fiber sensor is less than a human hair. These FBG sensors determine both environmental temperature and pressure. Therefore, such a fiber optic solution is highly promising in specific applications in severe environments.
Finally, the hybrid fiber optic sensor has been already produced and even tested. The distributed sensing system includes an FPI with a silica diaphragm. Also, fiber optic technology applies the femtosecond laser inscription technique and arc discharge methods. These FBG sensors demonstrate a high level of pressure and temperature sensitivity.
Additionally, the fiber optic sensor has an ultra-low level of cross sensitivities. “The temperature-induced error of the pressure measurement was –1.4286 kPa/ and ℃ pressure-induced error of the temperature measurement was ~0℃/MPa.” The mentioned-above benefits of FBG sensors make them perfect for numerous fields of applications.
Optromix is a fast-growing vendor of fiber Bragg grating (FBG) product line such as fiber Bragg grating sensors, for example, fbg strain sensors, FBG interrogators and multiplexers, Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) systems, Distributed Temperature Sensing (DTS) systems. The company creates and supplies a broad variety of fiber optic solutions for monitoring worldwide. If you are interested in structural health monitoring systems and want to learn more, please contact us at info@optromix.com