Mewa Singh

Simple fiber-optic technique for in-situ corrosion sensing in structures

Corrosion of structures is a serious problem involving man and material safety. Over the years, though several methods of monitoring corrosion have been devised with some success, but there is a persistent need for devising non-destructive and in-situ techniques for monitoring corrosion in structures. Fiber optic techniques are capable of meeting these requirements, besides offering several other important advantages. Fiber optic corrosion sensors have thus become quite attractive and are currently being investigated to address the high costs associated with the existing structural maintenance procedures. Fiber optics based direct absorption spectroscopic techniques investigated by some groups for estimating corrosion have used single fiber elements for recording the signal reflected from specimen at different wavelengths. As the light coupling efficiency of the single fiber elements is relatively poor in comparison with that of fiber bundles and the signal available for processing is weak, the paper presents a simple and alternate technique based on the color matching principle of fiber optic colorimetry to detect corrosion induced color changes. It employs a thin Y- shaped fiber optic bundle which increases the quantity of light energy coupled from a whitelight source. The light reflected off the sample is made incident on a PIN photo- detector through a complementary filter. A series of such probes can be safety embedded and or bonded to structures at pre-determined locations. The experimental set up for this sensor was implemented and feasibility of in-situ corrosion detection in structures demonstrated. Measurement data was acquired for steel samples corroded both in concrete embedded and open ambience conditions and results analyzed.

An intrinsic fiber optic H2S gas sensor

The sensor involves application of a chemical agent on an unclad portion of a multimode optical fiber which produces brown stains due to the presence of H2S gas resulting in anenuation of the light signal propagating in the fiber. The paper discusses the salient technical features and experimental details of the sensor.