This paper reports on an experimental program of work which investigates the reliability, durability, and packaging of fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) for application as distributed strain sensors during structural fatigue testing of military platforms. The influence of the FBG fabrication process on sensor reliability is investigated. In addition, methodologies for broad-area packaging and surface-mounting of FBG sensing arrays to defense platforms are developed and tested.

Although fibre Bragg gratings (FBGs) offer obvious potential for use in high-density, high-strain sensing applications, the adoption of this technology in the historically conservative aerospace industry has been slow. There are several contributing factors, one of which is variability in the reported performance of these sensors in harsh and fatigue prone environments. This paper reports on a comparative evaluation of the fatigue performance of FBG sensors written according to the same specifications using three different grating manufacturing processes: sensors written in stripped and re-coated fibres, sensors written during the fibre draw process and sensors written through fibre coating. Fatigue cycling of the fibres is provided by a customized electro-dynamically actuated loading assembly designed to provide high frequency and amplitude loading. Pre- and post-fatigue microscopic analysis and high-resolution transmission and reflection spectra scanning are conducted to investigate the fatigue performance of FBGs, the failure regions of fibres as well as any fatigue-related effects on the spectral profiles. It was found that because of the unique fabrication method, the sensors written through the fibre coating, also known as trans-jacket FBGs, show better fatigue performance than stripped and re-coated FBGs with greater control possible to tailor the optical reflection properties compared to gratings written in the draw tower. This emerging method for inscription of Type I gratings opens up the potential for mass production of higher reflectivity, apodised sensors with dense or complex array architectures which can be adopted as sensors for harsh environments such as in defence and aerospace industries.

This paper reports on an experimental investigation into the differences between directly and remotely bonded optical Fibre Bragg Grating (FBG) sensors when measuring Lamb waves in an aluminium plate. A sensor array comprising 16 individual short gauge-length FBG sensing elements is used to decompose the wave into its constituent modes for the directly bonded case where the array is attached directly to the plate and for the remotely bonded case where the same array is located in a suspended fibre 250 mm downstream from the fibre/plate contact region. The experimental results were consistent with model predictions and show that while the directly bonded fibre array can resolve the full multimodal Lamb wave spectrum in the plate, the remotely bonded sensor measures only a single non-dispersive longitudinal acoustic mode predicted by the analytical solution for a cylindrical waveguide. The inability of remote sensing to distinguish between different modes of Lamb wave propagation represents a significant limitation with respect to the diagnostic utility of this sensing approach.

The Structural Irregularity and Damage Evaluation Routine (SIDER) is a broadband vibration-based technique that uses features in complex curvature operating shapes to locate damage and other areas with structural stiffness variations. It is designed for the inspection of large-scale composite structures not amenable to more conventional inspection methods. The current SIDER methodology relies on impact excitation at a series of grid points on the structure and records the response using a small number of accelerometers to determine the operational curvature shapes. This paper reports on a modification to the SIDER technique whereby the acceleration measurements are replaced with in-plane strain measurements using Fibre Bragg Gratings (FBGs). One of the major challenges associated with using Bragg gratings for this type of response measurement is that the strains induced by structural vibrations tend to be low, particularly at higher frequencies. This paper also reports on the development of an intensity-based, swept wavelength interrogation system to facilitate these measurements. The modified SIDER system was evaluated on an E-glass/vinyl ester composite test beam containing a machined notch. The measurements accurately detected the presence and location of the notch. The distributive capacity of FBGs means that these sensors have the potential to replace the excitation grid with a measurement grid, allowing for single point or environmental excitation. The spatially separated measurements of strain can be used to provide the curvature shapes directly. This change in approach could potentially transition SIDER from an interval-based, broad-area inspection tool to an in-service structural health monitoring system.