Development of an Optical Fiber Sensor Interrogation System for Vibration Analysis

Since the introduction of dynamic optical fiber sensor interrogation systems on the market it has become possible to perform vibration measurements at frequencies up to a few kHz. Nevertheless, the use of these sensors in vibration analysis has not become a standard practice yet. This is mainly caused by the fact that interrogators are stand-alone systems which focus on strain measurements while other types of signals are also required for vibration analysis (e.g., force signals). In this paper, we present a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) interrogation system that enables accurate strain measurement simultaneously with other signals (e.g., excitation forces). The system is based on a Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSEL) and can easily be assembled with relatively low-cost off-the-shelf components. Dynamic measurements up to a few tens of kHz with a dynamic precision of around 3 nanostrain per square-root Hz can be performed. We evaluate the proposed system on two measurement examples: a steel beam with FBG sensors glued on top and a composite test specimen with a fiber sensor integrated within the material. We show that in the latter case the results of the interrogation system are superior in quality compared to a state-of-the-art commercially available interrogation system.