Analysis of the performance of temperature compensation for fiber Bragg grating strain sensor

Abstract

FBG(fiber Bragg grating) strain sensor are widely applied in structure health monitoring, the temperature compensation problem is a key issue that impact the performance of the strain sensor, many kinds of temperature compensation method also have been put forward, but the compensation result get from these method can’t meet the engineering requirements very well, especially when the ambient temperature changes rapidly due to the sunshine, the wind, the rain or other factors, and these impact can’t avoid when monitoring an open-air structure project. Through engineering case and experiments test found that, the inaccurate compensation temperature is the key reason lead to test result error, and closer analysis could found that the temperature from strain sensitive FBG and temperature sensitive FBG have non synchronous phenomenon, and the error could be reach 1 degrees Celsius, so use the temperature from the same moment to compensate the strain calculation also can’t get accurate results. The author thinks that the temperature non synchronous phenomenon may be caused by the temperature sensitive FBG and strain sensitive FBG have different package structure or package material, also may be installed on different positions, because all of these factors may lead to inconsistent temperature response speed between the two FBG when the ambient temperature changed rapidly. In order to confirm this conclusion, designed a FBG strain sensor package structure, the temperature sensitive FBG and strain sensitive FBG are packaged in one and the same structure with special stress isolation mechanism. Through temperature chamber test and engineering simulation experiment verified that the compensation temperature error could be reduced to 0.1 degrees Celsius, this will greatly improve the accuracy of temperature compensation for the FBG strain sensor.