Continuous pressure and temperature monitoring in fast rotating paper machine rolls using optical FBG sensor technology

A fiber optic Bragg grating (FBG) sensor and interrogation scheme has been designed to capture the momentary peak pressure forces in the nip of two adjacent paper machine rolls. The spatial distribution of these nip forces along circumference and length of the roll, for production speeds of up to 2000 m/min are investigated. Additionally, this FBG sensor system measures the temperature distribution in the roll cover. FBG sensor embedding has been optimized for the implementation of pressure force measurements in various roll cover materials. High strength draw tower grating (DTG) sensor arrays were used for the embedding process combined with spectrometric interrogation and autonomous power supply technologies. This results in an extremely robust fiber optic sensor system for operation at rotation speeds of 700 rpm, equivalent to centrifugal accelerations of 300 G. These measurements enable immediate quality control during various stages of the high-speed paper production process. © (2012) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.