Performance evaluation of soil-embedded plastic optical fiber sensors for geotechnical monitoring

Abstract

Based on the distributed fiber optic sensing (DFOS) technique, plastic optical fibers (POFs) are attractive candidates to measure deformations of geotechnical structures because they can withstand large strains before rupture. Understanding the mechanical interaction between an embedded POF and the surrounding soil or rock is a necessary step towards establishing an effective POF-based sensing system for geotechnical monitoring. This paper describes a first attempt to evaluate the feasibility of POF-based soil deformation monitoring considering the POF-soil interfacial properties. A series of pullout tests were performed under various confining pressures (CPs) on a jacketed polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) POF embedded in soil specimens. The test results were interpreted using a fiber-soil interaction model, and were compared with previous test data of silica optical fibers (SOFs). The results showed that the range of CP in this study did not induce plastic deformation of the POF; therefore, the POF-soil and the SOF-soil interfaces had similar behavior. CP was found to play an important role in controlling the fiber-soil interfacial bond and the fiber measurement range. Moreover, an expression was formulated to determine whether a POF would undergo plastic deformation when measuring soil deformation. The plasticity of POF may influence the reliability of measurements, especially for monitored geo-structures whose deformation would alternately increase and decrease. Taken together, these results indicate that in terms of the interfacial parameters studied here the POF is feasible for monitoring soil deformation as long as the plastic deformation issue is carefully addressed.