Abstract
Glass has been widely used as an important component in structures such as reflection glass curtainwalls, high speed trains, and landscape glass bridges with advantages of transparent and easy to clean, which are exposed to extreme weather conditions and external loads. Over time, these factors can lead to a damage of glass. So the health status of glass structure is critical, which should be routinely monitored to improve safety and provide reliable maintenance strategy. In this paper, fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors are used to monitor glass damage based on the fact that the main components of both the optical fiber and the glass are silica, which hints that both optical fiber and glass have the similar mechanical properties. Furthermore, the diameter of FBG installed on the glass structure is small, which has little effect on the beauty of glass. In order to validate the feasibility of the damage monitoring method, one common glass panel model with two-side fixations is loaded impact and static loads respectively, on the upper and lower surfaces of which four FBG sensors and two resistance strain gages are installed. A comparison study among the measured strains from the FBG sensors, those from the resistance strain gages, and those calculated from finite element model (FEM) analysis is conducted and the result obtained with experiments agrees with the element result. Test results show that the FBG sensors can effectively measure the glass deformation or damage under the impact and static load.
Highlights
Common glass whose main component is silicon has the advantages of transparent, beauty, and easy to clean
Four bare fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors are symmetrically installed on central position of the upper and lower surfaces of the glass panel, where FBG1 and FBG2 denote the FBG sensors installed on the upper surface of glass panel, and FBG3 and FBG4 denote the FBG sensors installed on the lower surface of glass panel
A comparison among the measuring data from four FBG sensors, those collected from two resistance strain gages installed on the lower and upper surfaces of the glass panel, and those calculated from finite element model (FEM) analysis is done
Summary
Common glass whose main component is silicon has the advantages of transparent, beauty, and easy to clean. Bridge in Canada, Grand Canyon Skywalk in USA, and Zhangjiajie Glass Bridge in China have been built in the world, the bridge decks of which are some high strength special transparent glasses All these structures are exposed to extreme weather conditions and external loads such as wind load, pedestrian load, and vibratory load caused by the earthquake. The fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor has several inherent advantages over conventional electrical sensors such as non-conductivity, resistance to corrosion, and immunity to electromagnetic interference Because of these merits, FBG sensors have become one of promising sensing technologies for structural health monitoring and been widely used in the subgrade, bridge, and tunnel and so on [8,9,10,11]. A comparison study among the measured strain from the FBG sensors, those from the resistance strain gages, and those calculated from FEM analysis is conducted
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