Temperature Compensation of a Strain Sensing Signal from a Fiber Optic Brillouin Optical Time Domain Analysis Sensor

Abstract

In order to do continuous health monitoring of large structures, it is necessary that the distributed sensing of strain and temperature of the structures be measured. So, we present the temperature compensation of a signal from a fiber optic BOTDA (Brillouin Optical Time Domain Analysis) sensor. A fiber optic BOTDA sensor has good performance of strain measurement. However, the signal of a fiber optic BOTDA sensor is influenced by strain and temperature. Therefore, we applied an optical fiber on the beam as follows: one part of the fiber, which is sensitive to the strain and the temperature, is bonded on the surface of the beam and another part of the fiber, which is only sensitive to the temperature, is located nearby the strain sensing fiber. Therefore, the strains can be determined from the strain sensing fiber while compensating for the temperature from the temperature sensing fiber. These measured strains were compared with the strains from electrical strain gages. After temperature compensation, it was concluded that the strains from the fiber optic BOTDA sensor had good coincidence with those values of the conventional electrical strain gages.