Simultaneous measurement of temperature and strain with long period grating pairs using low resolution detection

An investigation showing the performance of compact long period grating (LPG) pairs under demanding experimental conditions, making comparisons with the use of single LPGs for the simultaneous measurement of strain and temperature is presented. In this work, a LPG pair (LPGP) sensor comprising two weak (∼2.5 dB each) LPGs, 13 mm apart, was compared against the performance of two single LPG sensors (LPG1 & LPG2) with coupling strengths of 2.5 dB and 12.5 dB, respectively. All the LPG sensors used were subjected to extreme conditions arising from the fabrication, by choosing a high amplitude mask period with short physical length LPGs, and the high temperature annealing processes. In addition, a low resolution detection instrument was used to capture the spectra under study. Results have shown that the LPGP is ∼40 times better than the first single LPG used (LPG1) and three times better than the second LPG (LPG2). Using the error analysis methodology of Brady et al., the temperature and strain errors due to the uncertainty of the wavelength measurement for each of the LPG1, LPG2, and LPGP were compared with the typical performance of various fibre Bragg grating (FBG)-based sensor schemes under similar testing conditions. It was found that LPGPs offer the best performance especially when using low resolution detection instrumentation.