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Structural health monitoring (SHM) in-service is very important and definitely demanded for the safe working of high performance composite structures in situ. Fiber Bragg grating-based sensors were usually embedded inside a composite to compose a smart structure for a real time monitor. However, the mechanical performance of the materials would be unfavorably influenced. To lower the influence, a smaller diameter optical fiber is preferred. In this paper, a new non-destructive evaluation sensor system based on small diameter fiber Bragg grating (SDFBG) was proposed. The impact results show that the SDFBG sensor could be used in dynamic strain measurement and detect the natural frequency of the structure. Furthermore, the sensor would be applied in SHM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manufacture of the small diameter FBG was designed. Cross sensitivity of temperature and strain at sensing point was solved. Based on coupled-mode theory, optical properties of the designed FBG were studied. The reflection and transmission spectra of the designed FBG in small diameter were studied A single mode optical fiber, whose cladding diameter is 80 microm, was manufactured to a fiber Bragg grating (phi80FBG). According to spectrum simulation, the grating length and period were chosen as the wavelength was 1528 nm. The connector of the small diameter FBG with demodulation was designed too. In applications, the FBG measures the total deformation including strain due to forces applied to the structures as well as thermal expansion. In order to overcome this inconvenience and to measure both parameters at the same time and location, a novel scheme for simultaneous strain and temperature sensor was presented. Since the uniform strength beam has same deformation at all points, a pair of phi80 FBG was attached on a uniform strength cantilever. One of the FBG was on the upper surface, with the other one on the below. Therefore, the strains at the monitoring points were equal in magnitude but of opposite sign. The strain and temperature in sensing point could be discriminated by matrix equation. The determination of the K is not null and thus matrix inversion is well conditioned, even the values for the K elements are close. Consequently, the cross sensitivity of the FBG with temperature and strain can be experimentally solved. Experiments were carried out to study the strain discriminability of small-diameter FBG sensors. The temperature and strain were calculated and the errors were, respectively, 5% and 6%.