Fiber optic sensors based on Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) technology have been successfully adopted for sensor measurements for almost two decades. The advantages offered by FBG sensors, such as Electro-Magnetic Interference immunity and inherent intrinsic safety, provide motivation for the development of a commercial measurement platform. With the development of an FBG Fabry-Perot cavity, a sensor with sub-picometer spectral width allows for a factor of 1000 times improvement in strain measurement.
This thesis presents the development of a highly-accurate optical measurement platform based on the FBG Fabry-Perot cavity and Pound-Drever-Hall (PDH) laser locking technique that is demonstrated through the development of an optical torque sensor. With the fiber optic sensor designed as per the PDH requirements, the platform achieved a measurement accuracy of +/-0.015% of the full-scale torque value of 188N∙m. With the platform at ~$2,000, a successful
demonstration of the platform and a fiber optic torque sensor is presented.