Abstract

Due to their many technical advantages, Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) sensors have received wide-spread attention over the past decades. Many research laboratories and commercial companies from all parts of the world engage in FBG sensor development and hundreds of papers are published yearly. Although great progresses have been made, several major technical obstacles remain. In particular, two major technical problems prevent wide-spread industrial use of the FBG vibration sensors. The first problem is that the existing demodulation techniques can not meet the requirements of high resolution, large dynamic range, fast response, and reasonable ratio of performance/price. Secondly, the sensing FBG must be attached to a proper mechanism in order to couple out and intensify the response of the vibrations of the structure to be monitored. The mechanical structure of the coupling/amplifying mechanism must also meet requirements of high resolution, large dynamic range, reasonable damping, minimum distortions and small size.

© 2006 IEICE