A FIBER OPTIC SENSOR BASED UPON BUCKLING OF A FREELY SUSPENDED LENGTH OF FIBER

摘要

A new class of fiber optic sensors based on nonlinear buckling of fibers and optical bend loss provide intrinsic, all-fiber displacement sensors which exhibit several unique properties. Primary among them is a sensing range from less than 1 mu m to several mm, which is convenient for many structural monitoring applications. This sensing range is also very convenient for many actuator and lever arm sensing applications. In addition, the sensors exhibit a very low temperature dependence of the response, and are easily configurable for a variety of novel applications. They may be implemented with single-mode, few mode, or highly multimode fibers, including plastic optical fiber (POF). Both step index and graded index profile fibers produce useful sensors with differing response characteristics.