Designing, manufacturing and implementing real-time industrial application of temperature compensated FBG based strain sensor

Fiber Bragg Gratings (FBG) sensors have been considered as one of the novel sensing structures. At this point, investigations showed that usage of the corresponding sensors have been dramatically increased in the last decades. On the other hand it is worth to mention that, FBG sensors as compared to the conventional sensors seen in the literature have great advantages such as being ultra light sensing structures, immunity to RF and EM signal interferences, allowance to arrayed sensor structures and compatibility with various types of composites. In this manner, FBG sensor structures are mostly used aerospace industry, defence industry, wind turbines, signalization systems and etc. Although, FBG sensors are mostly known as to be used in terms of static measurements, they can also be used for dynamic measurements by simply considering proper manufacturing and sensor packing methods. Fiber Bragg gratings are obtained by inscribing core of the optical fiber and hence resulting refractive index modulation that is following a certain pattern. As an outcome of the manufacturing process, FBG sensors have the capability of meaningfull reactions to each and every physical change within the optical fiber. In this context, in order to consider FBG sensors as a sustainable product and operate it in continuous manner, ones need to consider some certain physical coverages within the FBG sensor structure. In this work, one of the mostly reviewed and preffered approaches which is packing FBG sensor structure is considered. In order to achieve mentioned purpose, a sensor package had been designed, manufactured and tested. Moreover, in the literature maximum measurable point of FBG strain sensors are known to be around 3500μɛ in the main time whilst,obtained results in this work showed that packaged FBG sensors have the capability to measure up to 15000 μɛ while maintaining measurement resolution. By that, proposed package promises to suitability of packaged FBG sensors in harsh environment applications as well. Last but not least, designed sensor is suitable for conventional and harsh environment applications, but further investigation and improvement shall be considered to enhance the usage of proposed package in composite based applications such as aerospace, railways and wind turbines.