On crack propagation monitoring by using reflection spectra of AFBG and UFBG sensors

摘要： Due to their light weight, small size and immunity to electromagnetic interference, Fiber Bragg Gratings (FBG) have shown great potential in structural health monitoring (SHM) area. Ordinarily, FBGs are used as the quasi-distributed sensors to detect structural damage by central wavelengths shifting, which has robust problem in real engineering application. It is found that the FBG reflection spectra can also be distorted with the non-uniform strain field caused by crack. Multiple indices can be extracted from the reflection spectra which can provides more information on the crack propagation. However, till now no researches have been investigated regarding the behaviors of different kinds of FBGs for crack propagation monitoring based on the FBG reflection spectra. In this paper, behaviors of the apodized FBG (AFBG) and the uniform FBG (UFBG) sensors for structural crack propagation monitoring are investigated. The reflective spectral behaviors of both UFBG and AFBG sensors under crack-generated non-uniform strain are illustrated by simulation and experiment. Three spectra indices, namely the central wavelength shift, the ratio of side lobe to main lobe and the information entropy, are proposed to indicate the propagation of the crack. The results show the UFBG sensors have better performance than the AFBG sensors which are more suitable for crack propagation monitoring.