Fiber-Reinforced Polymer-Packaged Optical Fiber Bragg Grating Strain Sensors for Infrastructures under Harsh Environment

Abstract

Optical fiber Bragg grating (FBG) has been recognized as an outstanding high-performance local monitoring sensor and is largely applied in structural health monitoring (SHM). This paper proposes a series of fiber-reinforced polymer- (FRP-) packaged optical fiber Bragg grating strain sensors to completely meet the requirements of rough civil engineering infrastructures, and their sensing performance under normal environment and harsh environment is experimentally investigated. It is experimentally and theoretically proved that FRP-packaged FBG strain sensors maintain excellent sensing performance as the bare FBG sensor under a harsh environment, and their durability is significantly enhanced due to the FRP materials. These FRP-packaged FBG strain sensors are successfully applied in the SHM system of Aizhai Bridge.