Tianliang Li

A non-contact fiber Bragg grating vibration sensor

A non-contact vibration sensor based on fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensing has been proposed and studied in this paper. The principle of the sensor as well as simulation and experimental analyses are introduced. When the distance between the movable head and the measured shaft changed, the diaphragm deformed under magnetic coupling of the permanent magnet on the measured magnetic shaft. As a result, the center wavelength of the FBG connected to the diaphragm changed, based on which the vibration displacement of the rotating shaft could be obtained. Experimental results show that the resonant frequency of the sensor is about 1500 Hz and the working band ranges within 0-1300 Hz, which is consistent with the simulation analysis result; the sensitivity is -1.694 pm/μm and the linearity is 2.92% within a range of 2-2.4 mm. It can be used to conduct non-contact measurement on the vibration of the rotating shaft system.

Shape Sensing Techniques for Continuum Robots in Minimally Invasive Surgery: A Survey

Continuum robots provide inherent structural compliance with high dexterity to access the surgical target sites along tortuous anatomical paths under constrained environments and enable to perform complex and delicate operations through small incisions in minimally invasive surgery. These advantages enable their broad applications with minimal trauma and make challenging clinical procedures possible with miniaturized instrumentation and high curvilinear access capabilities. However, their inherent deformable designs make it difficult to realize 3-D intraoperative real-time shape sensing to accurately model their shape. Solutions to this limitation can lead themselves to further develop closely associated techniques of closed-loop control, path planning, human–robot interaction, and surgical manipulation safety concerns in minimally invasive surgery. Although extensive model-based research that relies on kinematics and mechanics has been performed, accurate shape sensing of continuum robots remains challenging, particularly in cases of unknown and dynamic payloads. This survey investigates the recent advances in alternative emerging techniques for 3-D shape sensing in this field and focuses on the following categories: fiber-optic-sensor-based, electromagnetic-tracking-based, and intraoperative imaging modality-based shape-reconstruction methods. The limitations of existing technologies and prospects of new technologies are also discussed.

A Fiber Bragg Grating Sensing Based Triaxial Vibration Sensor.

A fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensing based triaxial vibration sensor has been presented in this paper. The optical fiber is directly employed as elastomer, and the triaxial vibration of a measured body can be obtained by two pairs of FBGs. A model of a triaxial vibration sensor as well as decoupling principles of triaxial vibration and experimental analyses are proposed. Experimental results show that: sensitivities of 86.9 pm/g, 971.8 pm/g and 154.7 pm/g for each orthogonal sensitive direction with linearity are separately 3.64%, 1.50% and 3.01%. The flat frequency ranges reside in 20–200 Hz, 3–20 Hz and 4–50 Hz, respectively; in addition, the resonant frequencies are separately 700 Hz, 40 Hz and 110 Hz in the x/y/z direction. When the sensor is excited in a single direction vibration, the outputs of sensor in the other two directions are consistent with the outputs in the non-working state. Therefore, it is effectively demonstrated that it can be used for three-dimensional vibration measurement.

Diaphragm Based Fiber Bragg Grating Acceleration Sensor with Temperature Compensation

A novel fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensing-based acceleration sensor has been proposed to simultaneously decouple and measure temperature and acceleration in real-time. This design applied a diaphragm structure and utilized the axial property of a tightly suspended optical fiber, enabling improvement in its sensitivity and resonant frequency and achieve a low cross-sensitivity. The theoretical vibrational model of the sensor has been built, and its design parameters and sensing properties have been analyzed through the numerical analysis. A decoupling method has been presented with consideration of the thermal expansion of the sensor structure to realize temperature compensation. Experimental results show that the temperature sensitivity is 8.66 pm/°C within the range of 30–90 °C. The acceleration sensitivity is 20.189 pm/g with a linearity of 0.764% within the range of 5~65 m/s2. The corresponding working bandwidth is 10~200 Hz and its resonant frequency is 600 Hz. This sensor possesses an excellent impact resistance for the cross direction, and the cross-axis sensitivity is below 3.31%. This implementation can avoid the FBG-pasting procedure and overcome its associated shortcomings. The performance of the proposed acceleration sensor can be easily adjusted by modifying their corresponding physical parameters to satisfy requirements from different vibration measurements.

Fiber Bragg Grating Sensing-Based Online Torque Detection on Coupled Bending and Torsional Vibration of Rotating Shaft

This paper has presented a novel approach based on fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensing to analyze and decouple the coupled bending and torsional vibration of a rotating shaft. The theoretical FBG-based strain detection models under pure torsional vibration and coupled bending and torsional vibration have been derived. Two FBG sensors have been attached on the opposite sides of a rotating shaft with an angle of 45° with respect to the axial direction to support the use of the proposed decoupling method and determine the decoupled bending and torsion signals. A new supporting device has been designed to protect the fiber optical rotary joint from damage under large load impact, and ensure the stable signal transmit. The calibrated sensitivity of the pasted FBGs for measuring torque is 7.02 pm/

A Diaphragm Type Fiber Bragg Grating Vibration Sensor Based on Transverse Property of Optical Fiber With Temperature Compensation

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A Novel Fiber Bragg Grating Displacement Sensor With a Sub-Micrometer Resolution

. Dynamic experiments on a rotor platform under different rotating speeds have been performed to effectively decouple the bending strain and torsional strain in real time. The decoupled torque measurements have shown a close agreement with the data detected from a commercial tacho-torquemeter, which demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed decoupling method.

A Fiber Bragg Grating Sensing-Based Micro-Vibration Sensor and Its Application.

This paper has presented a novel diaphragm-type fiber Bragg grating (FBG) vibration sensor with a small mass and an excellent sensitivity through the use of the transverse property of a tightly suspended optical fiber with two fixed ends. Two suspended optical fibers that were embedded with an FBG element each, have been arranged symmetrically along the both sides of the diaphragm in a parallel manner, and their middle points were connected with the two surfaces of the mass by rigid thin rods to sense vibration. The theoretical model of the presented sensor has been derived, and its sensing characteristics have been analyzed by numerical simulation to determine the physical parameters. Experiments have been conducted to show that its sensitivity is 31.25 pm/g within a working bandwidth range of 10~150 Hz. The linearity and relative sensitivity errors are 2.21% and ±10%, respectively. The experimental resonant frequency of 300 Hz is consistent with the theoretical value, which has verified the effectiveness of the proposed theoretical model. The temperature response of this sensor has decreased to 1.32 pm/°C in the range of 30~90°C after implementing the temperature compensation. Compared with the existing diaphragm-enabled FBG vibration sensors, the proposed sensor enables to support the easy implementation of distributed measurement, and the small mass allows for detection on mass-sensitive structures.

A temperature-independent force transducer using one optical fiber with multiple Bragg gratings

This letter has proposed a novel fiber Bragg grating (FBG) displacement sensor with a sub-micrometer resolution through the use of the transverse property of a suspended optical fiber with a pre-tension force. A wedge-shaped sliding block and a T-shaped cantilever beam formed a conversion mechanism to transfer the horizontal measured-displacement into the transverse movement of the optical fiber midpoint. Compared with existing FBG displacement sensors, this design does not only avoid the FBG-pasting process and its associated issues, such as the chirping failure and low repeatability, but also achieves a high resolution. The sensing principle has been presented, and the corresponding theoretical model has been derived and validated. Experiments show that this design has an excellent sensitivity of 2086.27 pm/mm and a high resolution of

A High-Sensitivity Fiber Bragg Grating Displacement Sensor Based on Transverse Property of a Tensioned Optical Fiber Configuration and Its Dynamic Performance Improvement

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