Four custom fiber Bragg grating (FBG)-based sensors are developed to monitor an artificial landslide located in Nanjing, China. The sensors are composed of a rod and two FBGs. Based on the strength of the rods, two sensors are referred to as “hard sensors” (Sensor 1 and Sensor 2), the other two are referred to as “soft sensors” (Sensor 3 and Sensor 4). The two FBGs are fixed on each sensor rod at distances of 50 cm and 100 cm from the top of the rod (an upper FBG and a lower FBG). In the experiment presented in this paper, the sensors are installed on a slope on which an artificial landslide is generated through both machine-based and manual excavation. The fiber sensing system consists of the four custom FBG-based sensors, optical fiber, a static fiber grating demodulation instrument (SM125), and a PC with the necessary software. Experimental data was collected in the presence of an artificial landslide, and the results show that the lower FBGs are more sensitive than the upper FBGs for all four of the custom sensors. It was also found that Sensor 2 and Sensor 4 are more capable of monitoring small-scale landslides than Sensor 1 and Sensor 3, and this is mainly due to their placement location with respect to the landslide. The stronger rods used in the hard sensors make them more adaptable to the harsh environments of large landslides. Thus, hard sensors should be fixed near the landslide, while soft sensors should be placed farther away from the landslide. In addition, a clear tendency of strain variation can be detected by the soft sensors, which can be used to predict landslides and raise a hazard alarm.

Although theoretical investigation has demonstrated that fewer strain transfer layers imply a greater strain transfer ratio, as well as increased accuracy, most researchers are still focused on investigating encapsulated Fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) in surface strain measurements. This is because, in a traditional view, bare FBGs are too fragile to be mounted on the substrate for measuring surface strain. Polyimide FBGs may provide a better balance point between accuracy and protection. A new method to measure surface strain with polyimide fiber Bragg gratings is proposed. Bare polyimide FBGs have a polyimide coating, but like regular non-coated FBGs. This gives polyimide FBGs a higher strain transfer ratio and response frequency. Bare polyimide FBGs can be considered as uncoated FBGs. The coupling of the matrix material of polyimide FBGs is improved as compared to FBGs without coating. In order to verify the capacity for surface strain measurement, polyimide FBGs are mounted to obtain the surface strain of a concrete specimen with SM130-700 interrogator from Micron Optics Incorporation (MOI) with a sampling frequency maximum of 2000 Hz. The experiment demonstrates that polyimide FBGs work well even in dynamic surface strain measurements such as explosion measurement. Validation experiment in this paper also proposed that fewer strain transfer layers can increase dynamic response frequency and coupling between FBG and substrate.

The precision of the encapsulated fiber optic sensor embedded into a host suffers from the influences of encapsulating materials. Furthermore, an interface transfer effect of strain sensing exists. This study uses an embedded basalt fiber-encapsulated fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor as the research object to derive an expression in a multilayer interface strain transfer coefficient by considering the mechanical properties of the host material. The direct impact of the host material on the strain transfer at an embedded multipoint continuous FBG (i.e., multiple gratings written on a single optical fiber) monitoring strain sensor, which was self-developed and encapsulated with basalt fiber, is studied to present the strain transfer coefficients corresponding to the positions of various gratings. The strain transfer coefficients of the sensor are analyzed based on the experiments designed for this study. The error of the experimental results is $∼2μϵ$ when the strain is at $60μϵ$ and below. Moreover, the measured curves almost completely coincide with the theoretical curves. The changes in the internal strain field inside the embedded structure of the basalt fiber-encapsulated FBG strain sensor could be easily monitored. Hence, important references are provided to measure the internal stress strain of the sensor.

A long distance displacement and continuous sensor based on distributed optical fiber sensing (DOFS) with the ability to measure the horizontal displacement of deep excavation was investigated herein. The feasibility and the accuracy were verified based on different numerical algorithms derived and finite element analysis. The evaluation of robustness under ambient noise and operational errors was conducted. The Laboratory tests and on-site monitoring works were carried out. The experimental results confirm that the new optical frequency domain reflection (OFDR)-based sensor can accurately measure the horizontal displacement field of the deep pit on the basis of 1cm spatial resolution within 30m soil depth. This allows to achieve real-time and automated monitoring of the deep excavation, providing advanced safety monitoring of the excavation works.