A Transverse Load Sensor With Ultra-Sensitivity Employing Vernier-Effect Improved Parallel-Structured Fiber-Optic Fabry-Perot Interferometer

Yongfeng Wu,Tong Nan,Bo Liu,Lilong Zhao,Jing Wu,Yaya Mao,Tingting Sun,Jin Wang

doi:10.1109/access.2019.2933561

Abstract

The parallel structured fiber-optic Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI) is theoretically proposed and experimentally demonstrated for transverse load measurement based on Vernier-effect. This kind of sensor consists of a hollow microsphere cavity fiber-optic FPI for sensing function and an air cavity for reference, both of which are parallel connected by a 3 dB optical fiber coupler with the functionality of Vernier-effect. Experimental results indicate that the proposed sensor can provide a high transverse load sensitivity of -3.75 nm/N, which is 3.4 times higher than single hollow microsphere cavity FPI. Moreover, with the excellent features of low cost, easy fabrication, and stable sensing, the parallel structured FPIs proposed will provide a new vision for high sensitivity transverse load sensing.

Highlights

Fiber-optic Fabry–Perot interferometer (FPI) has drawn great attention and been widely used for various physical quantities sensing, such as temperature [1], [2], strain [3]–[5], refractive index [6], [7], pressure [8]–[10] and et al [11], due to its huge advantages of stability, reliability, compactness and ease of fabrication
We propose paralleled configuration based on two in-line FPIs for transverse load measurement based on Vernier effect
The parallel-structured fiber-optic FPI achieves high transverse load sensitivity of −3.75 nm/N, approximately 3 times the sensitivity of a transverse load sensor based on the hollow microsphere cavity FPI

Summary

Introduction

Fiber-optic Fabry–Perot interferometer (FPI) has drawn great attention and been widely used for various physical quantities sensing, such as temperature [1], [2], strain [3]–[5], refractive index [6], [7], pressure [8]–[10] and et al [11], due to its huge advantages of stability, reliability, compactness and ease of fabrication. Y. Wu et al.: Transverse Load Sensor With Ultra-Sensitivity Employing Vernier-Effect Improved Parallel-Structured Fiber-Optic FPI

Results

Conclusion