Full-field static and dynamic strain measurement by an inverse conjugate beam method with two-type sensor placement

Abstract

This paper presents a novel inverse conjugate beam method (ICBM) to full-field static and dynamic strain measurement using long-gauge fiber Bragg grating (FBG) and vision sensors. By applying reverse analysis of conjugate beam theory, the ICBM establishes a displacement–strain transformation model that effectively explains the correlation between displacement, distributed strain and desired strain. The static and dynamic strain can be reconstructed directly by combining the monitored displacement and strain responses at the displacement monitoring locations. The vision sensor is employed to complement the installed long-gauge strain sensor for monitoring the displacement of the location without a long-gauge sensor. This method helps overcome the difficulty of monitoring the full-bridge strain due to insufficient sensors or inaccessible monitoring positions. At the same time, according to this method, it is necessary to use the displacement from the visual sensor to determine the residual stiffness of each unit as prior information for the ICBM. Both numerical studies and laboratory tests are carried out on a simply supported beam for conceptual verification. The results demonstrate that the proposed ICBM successfully achieves static and dynamic strain response reconstruction at displacement monitoring locations.