Design and in-the-field performance evaluation of compact FBG sensor system for structural health monitoring applications

Over the last few years optical fibre sensor systems have been developed and their use reported for the monitoring of large civil engineering structures. In this way they have shown themselves to be well suited to the measurement of strain and temperature simultaneously, in a number of different applications. This work builds on previous research in the use of available Fibre Bragg Grating (FBG) sensor technology as the basis of the design of a compact system for strain measurement which is easy to implement (by comparison to larger and more costly systems) for structural health monitoring. The system described is based on using a compact FBG-based monitoring system incorporating a scanning Fabry–Perot filter and a commercial USB-port oscilloscope. The system design and performance evaluation in laboratory and field tests are reported.