A novel distributed optic fiber transduser for landslides monitoring

Unstable slopes have been monitored since the beginning of the last century. Current electro-optic detection technology can achieve automatic monitoring remotely with high safety and includes such methods as time domain reflectometry, optical time domain reflectometry and Brillouin optical time domain reflectometry. However, these technologies cannot simultaneously meet the requirements of distributed sensing, high initial measurement accuracy, large sliding distance and high dynamic range. Based on the space frame theory of reinforced concrete beams, this study presents an innovative design for a distributed optic fiber sensor: a novel transduser with a bowknot. Using the optic fiber microbending loss mechanism and optical time domain reflectometry technology, bending and shear tests based on the combined fiber sensor are conducted, and the vertical displacement of midspan, optical fiber sliding distance and loss data under three different spans are collected. Feasibility study and economic analysis of the transduser used for landslide monitoring are also presented. The results show that the maximum sliding distance of our transduser is 21.8, 26.5 and 30.6 mm with corresponding initial accuracies of 1.2, 2.3 and 3.3 mm, and the dynamic ranges are 0–20.6, 0–23.2 and 0–27.3 mm. The cost of the transduser is economical at $0.15/m, which demonstrates promising economic application, high monitoring effectiveness and stability in monitoring civil works, such as slope, dam and tunnel construction and measurement.

Research highlights
► Based on space frame theory of reinforced concrete beam, this paper presents a novel distributed fiber optical transduser for landslides monitoring.
► Laboratory experiments results show that this novel transduser can achieve high accuracy of initial measurement, large sliding distance of measurement and dynamic range simultaneously.
► Compared with other optoelectronic monitoring methods, this transduser is cheaper and easy to pave.