Abstract

High demand on structural health monitoring has encouraged the development of smart structure geometries to be more effective and competitive [1]. One of the technologies that has been integrated into these structures is the fiber Bragg grating (FBG) [2]. The FBG is a mature technology that has seen many applications, particularly the field of sensing where it has many advantages such as immunity to electromagnetic field, long lifetime, high sensitivity, lightweight and low loss. There are several types of optically based physical sensors. Most of which are fabricated in a standard dimension silica optical fiber which due to its cylindrical structure are unable to independently measure twist. Here we demonstrate a bending and twist sensor fabricated in a flat-fiber substrate. A Y-splitter and a series of Bragg gratings along the 50 mm length provides a differential signal providing distinction between bend and twist within the sample.

© 2011 Optical Society of America