A cascade structure made by two types of gratings for simultaneous measurement of temperature and strain

In this paper, a new cascade structure is presented to measure temperature and strain simultaneously. It is made of a CO2-laser-notched long-period fiber grating (CO2-LFPG) and a modular LFPG. Experiments prove that the temperature sensitivity of the modular LPFG is about 5 times lower than that of the CO2-LFPG. Before and after connecting the modular LPFG and the CO2-LPFG together, the experimental results indicate that the temperature and the strain sensitivities of them almost have no change and are retained. The temperature and the strain sensitivities of modular LPFG (resonance wavelength at 1258 nm) are −15.4 pm/°C and −1.2 pm/με, respectively. And the temperature and the strain sensitivities of CO2-LPFG (resonance wavelength at 1356 nm) are 58.3 pm/°C and −0.5 pm/με, respectively. Through the experiments, the feasibility of using the proposed sensor to measure strain and temperature simultaneously has been verified. Therefore, it is strongly believed that the proposed sensor can be used to achieve simultaneous measurement of strain and temperature.