Characterization of solid materials by a polarimetric fiber optic sensor

Abstract

We present a solid material characterisation method using a very acccurate polarimetric fiber optic sensor. This very accurate and sensitive transductor permits us to measure the rigidity modulus G of several solid materials presenting several differents geometries. The G determination, in the first part, is achieved by measuring the torsion angle optically and by a non destructive method. The rigidity modulus of Aluminum, Plexiglas and Steel shaft presenting different geometries has been experimentally achieved: we obtained (2.013±0.008)×10¹⁰, (1.384±0.025)×10⁹ and (1.040±0.012)×10¹¹N.m^-2 for the Aluminum, Plexiglas and Steel respectively. The second part of our study presents the dependance of the torsion angle as function of an applied torque for different shaft lengths (from 5 to 32 cm). The comparison between the theoritical and experimental results shows us a good validation criteria of this non destructive optical characterisation method.