Feasibility use of in-line Mach–Zehnder interferometer optical fibre sensor in lightweight foamed concrete structural beam on curvature sensing and crack monitoring

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This article presents a novel study on curvature sensing and crack monitoring in lightweight foamed concrete structural beam using the packaged fibre-based in-line Mach–Zehnder interferometer curvature sensor. The Mach–Zehnder interferometer sensors which consist of two abrupt biconic tapers were fabricated and packaged into polypropylene slabs to protect the sensors under harsh condition of the real sensing environment, as the sensors were embedded into lightweight foamed concrete structural beams for field tests. Pretest characterizations of Mach–Zehnder interferometer sensors based on the packaging thicknesses at different operating wavelengths (1310, 1490 and 1550 nm) were done before the field tests. Three packages with different thicknesses were prepared to justify the effect of the packaging thicknesses on the curvature sensitivity of sensors. Results showed that the Mach–Zehnder interferometer sensor with a thicker bottom slab has the highest sensitivity of up to 3.53 µW m−1 which is capable of detecting a minimum curvature of 0.25 km−1 and a maximum curvature radius of up to 4 km. In the field tests, three Mach–Zehnder interferometer sensors were embedded into the lightweight foamed concrete structural beams with different polypropylene percentages (0.4%, 0.25% and 0%, respectively) to characterize the sensor performance according to the concrete environments with different tensile capacities. Mach–Zehnder interferometer sensor managed to hold up to a maximum loading force of 26 kN in the concrete environment before stopping functioning. Optical powers in response to the loading forces imposed to the beams were mapped to the strains measured by the lead wire alloy foil strain gauges (brand: TML, model: FLK-6-11) with a good correlation value of up to 0.968. Furthermore, the double-sided sensing property of Mach–Zehnder interferometer sensors preponderates over the conventional strain gauges in detecting the internal cracking within the concretes before any earlier sighting of the macrocracks.