Junghyun Wee

Increasing signal amplitude in fiber Bragg grating detection of Lamb waves using remote bonding.

Networks of fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors can serve as structural health monitoring systems for large-scale structures based on the collection of ultrasonic waves. The demodulation of structural Lamb waves using FBG sensors requires a high signal-to-noise ratio because the Lamb waves are of low amplitudes. This paper compares the signal transfer amplitudes between two adhesive mounting configurations for an FBG to detect Lamb waves propagating in an aluminum plate: a directly bonded FBG and a remotely bonded FBG. In the directly bonded FBG case, the Lamb waves create in-plane and out-of-plane displacements, which are transferred through the adhesive bond and detected by the FBG sensor. In the remotely bonded FBG case, the Lamb waves are converted into longitudinal and flexural traveling waves in the optical fiber at the adhesive bond, which propagate through the optical fiber and are detected by the FBG sensor. A theoretical prediction of overall signal attenuation also is performed, which is the combination of material attenuation in the plate and optical fiber and attenuation due to wave spreading in the plate. The experimental results demonstrate that remote bonding of the FBG significantly increases the signal amplitude measured by the FBG.

Experimental Study on Directionality of Ultrasonic Wave Coupling Using Surface-Bonded Fiber Bragg Grating Sensors

Recent studies demonstrated the potential of increasing the Lamb wave detection sensitivity of fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors by bonding the optical fiber away from the grating location, instead of the conventional method of bonding the FBG directly. The FBG located at a remote location further along the optical fiber collects the guided traveling wave in the optical fiber generated from the Lamb wave signal. This remote bonding method could potentially be extended to a series of multiplexed FBGs. However, previous experiments also detected coupling to guided traveling waves in both directions in the optical fiber, which could have significant effects on multiplexed signals. In this paper, we measure the coupled signal amplitudes in both forward and backward directions, when ultrasonic waves couple from a thin plate to an optical fiber and from an optical fiber to a thin plate. The forward- and backward-induced modes are measured in both the optical fiber and the plate. The same experiment is then performed for the case when ultrasonic signal is coupled from the optical fiber to the plate. In addition, two different types of bonding, cyanoacrylate adhesive and frictional bond, are explored to investigate how the signal conversion depends on the bonding method. The results demonstrate that the coupling of ultrasonic waves from a thin structure to an optical fiber and from an optical fiber to the structure is complex. The coupling does not only occur in the direction of the wave propagation, but can be coupled into both forward and backward modes, depending on the bonding configuration used.

Sensitivity of contact-free fiber Bragg grating sensor to ultrasonic Lamb wave

Networks of fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors can serve as structural health monitoring (SHM) systems for large-scale structures based on the collection of ultrasonic waves. The demodulation of structural Lamb waves requires a high signal-to-noise ratio because Lamb waves have a low amplitude. This paper investigates the signal transfer between Lamb waves propagating in an aluminum plate collected by an optical fiber containing a FBG. The fiber is bonded to the plate at locations away from the FBG. The Lamb waves are converted into longitudinal and flexural traveling waves propagating along the optical fiber, which are then transmitted to the Bragg grating. The signal wave amplitude is measured for different distances between the bond location and the Bragg grating. Bonding the optical fiber away from the FBG location and closer to the signal source produces a significant increase in signal amplitude, here measured to be 5.1 times that of bonding the Bragg grating itself. The arrival time of the different measured wave coupling paths are also calculated theoretically, verifying the source of the measured signals. The effect of the bond length to Lamb wavelength ratio is investigated, showing a peak response as the bond length is reduced compared to the wavelength. This study demonstrates that coupling Lamb waves into guided traveling waves in an optical fiber away from the FBG increases the signal-to-noise ratio of Lamb wave detection, as compared to direct transfer of the Lamb wave to the optical fiber at the location of the FBG.

Effect of continuous optical fiber bonding on ultrasonic detection using fiber Bragg grating

For laboratory demonstrations, Lamb wave detection using fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors is typically performed with only the grating location spot bonded and with the fiber axis aligned with the ultrasonic propagation direction. However, in reality, the entire length of fiber is often bonded to protect the fiber from any environmental damage, referred to here as continuous bonding. Theoretically, the Lamb wave signal can couple to the guided traveling wave in the optical fiber at any adhered location, which could potentially produce output signal distortion. In this paper, we investigate the impact of continuously bonding a long length of optical fiber on the measured Lamb wave signal detected by an FBG. Therefore, an experiment is performed to measure the Lamb wave signals excited from a PZT actuator using a surface bonded FBG with varying optical fiber bond length, indicating that the output FBG response remains constant with changing length. The second experiment investigates the FBG angular response to the traveling wave in the optical fiber, and compares to the conventional case where FBG directly measures the Lamb waves with varying angle. Specifically, the optical fiber is bonded to the plate at a distance away from the FBG. The Lamb wave is launched to the bond location with varying angles, which is coupled to traveling wave, then measured with FBG. The results indicate that the mechanism of the Lamb wave transfer to the directly bonded FBG is through displacement matching, whereas that of the traveling wave is through a forced excitation.

The adhesive effect on ultrasonic Lamb wave detection sensitivity of remotely bonded fiber Bragg grating sensors

Fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors are excellent transducers for ultrasonic signal detection in structural health monitoring (SHM) application. While the FBG sensors are typically bonded directly on the surface of a structure to collect signals, one of the major challenges arises from demodulating relevant information from the low amplitude signal. The authors have experimentally demonstrated that the ultrasonic wave detection sensitivity of FBG sensors can be increased by bonding optical fiber away from the FBG location. This configuration is referred to here as remote bonding. However the mechanism causing this phenomenon has not been explored. In this work, we simulate the previous experimental work through a transient analysis based on the finite element method, and the output FBG response is calculated through the transfer matrix method. We first model an optical fiber bonded on the surface of an aluminum plate with an adhesive. The consistent input signal is excited to the plate, which is detected by the directly and remotely-bonded FBGs. The effect of the presence of the adhesive around the FBG is investigated by analyzing strain and displacement along the length of the FBGs at the locations of direct and remote bonding cases, and the consequent output FBG responses. The result demonstrates that the sensitivity difference between the direct and remote bonding cases is originated from shear lag effect due to adhesive.

Bi-directional ultrasonic wave coupling to FBGs in continuously bonded optical fiber sensing

Fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors are typically spot-bonded onto the surface of a structure to detect ultrasonic waves in laboratory demonstrations. However, to protect the rest of the optical fiber from any environmental damage during real applications, bonding the entire length of fiber, called continuous bonding, is commonly done. In this paper, we investigate the impact of continuously bonding FBGs on the measured Lamb wave signal. In theory, the ultrasonic wave signal can bi-directionally transfer between the optical fiber and the plate at any adhered location, which could potentially produce output signal distortion for the continuous bonding case. Therefore, an experiment is performed to investigate the plate-to-fiber and fiber-to-plate signal transfer, from which the signal coupling coefficient of each case is theoretically estimated based on the experimental data. We demonstrate that the two coupling coefficients are comparable, with the plate-to-fiber case approximately 19% larger than the fiber-to-plate case. Finally, the signal waveform and arrival time of the output FBG responses are compared between the continuous and spot bonding cases. The results indicate that the resulting Lamb wave signal output is only that directly detected at the FBG location; however, a slight difference in signal waveform is observed between the two bonding configurations. This paper demonstrates the practicality of using continuously bonded FBGs for ultrasonic wave detection in structural health monitoring (SHM) applications.