A fiber-optic cure monitoring system is proposed to measure curing status of composite structure such as a large scale wind turbine blade. The monitoring is based on the measurement of Fresnel reflectivity at the optical fiber/epoxy resin interface. The refractive index of epoxy resin varies throughout curing stages, changing the Fresnel reflectivity. The curing status is decided by monitoring the reflected intensity variation. The usage of fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor helps to separate the temperature-induced cross effects. A Gaussian curve fitting algorithm was applied to FBG spectra which were distorted in curing procedure. The substantial measurement errors could be minimized by locating the centroids of the Gaussian curve-fitted spectra. From the experiments performed in various isothermal conditions, the proposed system successfully identified the onset of gelation and the completion of curing of epoxy resins.

Fiber Bragg grating sensors are placed in a fiber-optic Sagnac loop to combine the grating temperature sensors and the fiber-optic mandrel acoustic emission sensors in single optical circuit. A wavelength-scanning fiber-optic laser is used as a common light source for both sensors. A fiber-optic attenuator is placed at a specific position in the Sagnac loop in order to separate buried Bragg wavelengths from the Sagnac interferometer output. The Bragg wavelength shifts are measured with scanning band-pass filter demodulation and the mandrel output is analyzed by applying a fast Fourier transform to the interference signal. This hybrid-scheme could greatly reduce the size and the complexity of optical circuitry and signal processing unit, making it suitable for low cost multi-stress monitoring of large scale power systems.