Chi-Yeop Kim

Distributed strain and temperature measurement of a beam using fiber optic BOTDA sensor

In order to do continuous health monitoring of large structures, it is necessary that the distributed sensing of strain and temperature of the structures are to be measured. So, we present the strain and temperature measurement distributed on a beam using fiber optic BOTDA(Brillouin Optical Time Domain Analysis) sensor. Fiber optic BOTDA sensor has good performance of strain measurement. However, the signal of fiber optic BOTDA sensor is influenced by strain and temperature. Therefore, we applied an optical fiber on the beam as follows: one part of the fiber, which is sensitive the strain and the temperature, is bonded on the surface of the beam and another part of the fiber, which is only sensitive to the temperature, is located at the same position of the strain sensing fiber. Therefore, the strains can be determined from the strain sensing fiber with compensating the temperature from the temperature sensing fiber. These measured strains were compared with the strains from electrical strain gages. After temperature compensation, it was concluded that the strains from fiber optic BOTDA sensor had good agreements with those values of the conventional strain gages.

Temperature Compensation of a Strain Sensing Signal from a Fiber Optic Brillouin Optical Time Domain Analysis Sensor

In order to do continuous health monitoring of large structures, it is necessary that the distributed sensing of strain and temperature of the structures be measured. So, we present the temperature compensation of a signal from a fiber optic BOTDA (Brillouin Optical Time Domain Analysis) sensor. A fiber optic BOTDA sensor has good performance of strain measurement. However, the signal of a fiber optic BOTDA sensor is influenced by strain and temperature. Therefore, we applied an optical fiber on the beam as follows: one part of the fiber, which is sensitive to the strain and the temperature, is bonded on the surface of the beam and another part of the fiber, which is only sensitive to the temperature, is located nearby the strain sensing fiber. Therefore, the strains can be determined from the strain sensing fiber while compensating for the temperature from the temperature sensing fiber. These measured strains were compared with the strains from electrical strain gages. After temperature compensation, it was concluded that the strains from the fiber optic BOTDA sensor had good coincidence with those values of the conventional electrical strain gages.

Continuous measurement of temperature distributed on a building construction

We have focused on the development of a fiber optic BOTDA (Brillouin Optical Time Domain Analysis) sensor system in order to measure temperature distributed on large structures. Also, we present a feasibility study of the fiber optic sensor to monitor the distributed temperature on a building construction. A fiber optic BOTDA sensor system, which has a capability of measuring the temperature distribution, attempted over several kilometers of long fiber paths. This simple fiber optic sensor system employs a laser diode and two electro-optic modulators. The optical fiber of the length of 1400 m was installed on the surfaces of the building. The change of the distributed temperature on the building construction was well measured by this fiber optic sensor. The temperature changed normally up to 4 degrees C through one day.

Feasibility study for monitoring of off-shore pipelines using BOTDA system

The oil leakage of off-shore pipelines will cause ocean contamination and economic losses. These accidents may happen by the failures of offshore pipelines due to corrosion, impulse and free-spanning. So, it is very urgent on pipeline health monitoring. Fiber optic distributed sensors should be used to know when and where failures may occur. In this study, a feasibility of BOTDA (Brillouin Optical Time Domain Analysis) system is studied on off-shore pipeline distributed strain monitoring influenced by free spanning. Strain distribution of an off-shore pipeline is calculated by numerical analysis and strain measurement experiments are carried on a beam bending test using BOTDA system. BOTDA could be an excellent tool to monitor the long-distance pipeline.

Two step signal processing of optical fiber mesh for intruder detection

Optical fiber mesh can be applied on some fences to secure some protective facilities. It is necessary to give the fiber macro bending signal in order to detect an intruder at the initial intrusion stage with the off signal from fiber cutting. Therefore, in this work, we made two step signal processing algorithm of the optical fiber mesh for detecting the intruder effectively. First step is composed of the discrimination processing whether the fiber has some macro bending or not. If the signal tells the macro bending, then it means that some intruder tries to invade. Second step is the signal destruction by cutting the optical fiber. This step means that the intruder invaded by cutting the optical fiber mesh.

Analytic Formulation of Transmission Light Intensity of Hole Blockers in Intensity-based Polymer Optical Fiber Sensors

Intensity-based optical fiber sensors are devised using a blocker which is located between two polymer optical fibers(POFs), one fiber is light-in and the other is light-out. This blocker is moved by an external displacement. Therefore, finding a general formulation of the relation between this displacement and transmission light intensity of various blockers is important to help develop intensity-based optical fiber sensors. In this paper, we consider blockers with arbitrary shapes from circular holes to inclined angled blockers. The transmission light intensities of such blockers should be determined by this generalized equation. In order to verify this equation, the calculated intensities of the blockers are compared with the values acquired from experiment. In the comparison, it is shown that the analytic equation can give the exact values of the transmitted light intensities for the assorted blockers. The range of the displacement measurement is also shown to be about 6 times of the radius of the hole in the case of a 9 degree inclined angle blocker.

Smart Acoustic Emission System for Wireless Monitoring of Concrete Structures

Acoustic emission (AE) has emerged as a powerful nondestructive tool to detect preexisting defects or to characterize failure mechanisms. Recently, this technique or this kind of principle, that is an in-situ monitoring of inside damages of materials or structures, becomes increasingly popular for monitoring the integrity of large structures. Concrete is one of the most widely used materials for constructing civil structures. In the nondestructive evaluation point of view, a lot of AE signals are generated in concrete structures under loading whether the crack development is active or not. Also, it was required to find a symptom of damage propagation before catastrophic failure through a continuous monitoring. Therefore we have done a practical study in this work to fabricate compact wireless AE sensor and to develop diagnosis system. First, this study aims to identify the differences of AE event patterns caused by both real damage sources and the other normal sources. Secondly, it was focused to develop acoustic emission diagnosis system for assessing the deterioration of concrete structures such as a bridge, dame, building slab, tunnel etc. Thirdly, the wireless acoustic emission system was developed for the application of monitoring concrete structures. From the previous laboratory study such as AE event patterns analysis under various loading conditions, we confirmed that AE analysis provided a promising approach for estimating the condition of damage and distress in concrete structures. In this work, the algorithm for determining the damage status of concrete structures was developed and typical criteria for decision making was also suggested. For the future application of wireless monitoring, a low energy consumable, compact, and robust wireless acoustic emission sensor module was developed and applied to the concrete beam for performance test. Finally, based on the self-developed diagnosis algorithm and compact wireless AE sensor, new AE system for practical AE diagnosis was demonstrated for assessing the conditions of damage and distress in concrete structures.

Fiber optic acoustic sensors for crack growth diagnostics

There are to be some cracks on the material degradation part or the stress concentration parts of the main members, which carry on over-loads, of structures. Because these cracks can be used to evaluate the structural health status, it is important to monitor the crack growth for maintaining the structural safety. In this study, the fiber Bragg grating sensor with a drop ball was developed as a sensor for crack growth detection of an existing crack. The crack growth detection sensor was constructed with three parts: a probe part, a wavelength control light source and receiver part, and an impact part. The probe part was just formed with a fiber Bragg grating optical fiber. The wavelength control light source part was composed of a current supplying circuit, a DFB laser diode, and a TEC control circuit for wavelength control. Also, the impact part was just implemented by dropping a steel ball. The performance of this sensor was confirmed by the experiments of the crack detection with an aluminum plate having one existing crack. According to these experiments, the difference of the sensor signal outputs was correlated with the crack length. So, it was confirmed that this sensor could be applied to monitor the crack growth.

Multiplexed optical loss based fiber optic sensor for displacement measurement

Continuous monitoring of soil movements is important to maintain civil structures. Fiber optic sensors can give the sensing solution for continuous displacement monitoring because they can be multiplexed with various sensors on one line of optical fiber, have the durability to harsh environments, and also are not affected by electro-magnetic effects. In this study, we work on the development of a multiplexed optical loss based fiber optic sensor for measuring displacements using the signal difference between the two reflected signals from a pair of optical connectors with various bending losses between them through an optical time domain reflectometer. We fabricate a multiplexed optical loss based fiber-optic sensor detecting linear displacements of 5 measuring positions of an object by setting these new 5 fiber-optic sensor probes on a single mode fiber simultaneously. We find that these sensors have a good capability to measure the displacements.

Development of optical frequency-modulated fiber optic interferometric sensor for measuring structural strain

Optical frequency modulated fiber optic interferometric sensor is developed to sense the mechanical quantities, such as displacement, strain, force etc. It has been difficult to distinguish the increase and decrease of the mechanical quantities measured by the conventional fiber optic interferometric sensors because their signals only have a sinusoidal wave pattern related to the change of the quantities. In this study, in order to measure the mechanical quantities with the distinction of the changing direction of the quantities, the fiber optic Michelson interferometric sensor is simply constructed by the laser light modulated with saw tooth wave pattern.