A compact and novel superimposed fiber grating (SI-FG) sensor for simultaneous measurement of temperature and bending based on UV-induced FBG cascaded with a multimode fiber (MMF) embedded ultra-long period fiber grating (MMF-EULPFG) has been proposed and experimentally validated. The MMF-EULPFG acts as a temperature and bending sensing unit and was fabricated by periodically splicing a non-UV-non-photosensitive MMF and a UV-photosensitive single-mode fiber (SMF) which is so called cleaving-splicing method. Due to the periodic refractive index modulation, the 6-period SMF-MMF structure based MMF-EULPFG with a total length of 2.7 mm forms transmission spectra with a −17 dB dip. The proposed SI-FG sensor exhibits high bending and temperature sensitivities of 17.096 nm/m−1 and −0.238 nm/℃, respectively. The UV-induced FBG is fabricated in the initial segment of UV-sensitive fibers within EULPFG by UV exposure method. The dip of FBG transmission spectra also shows response to bending and temperature. By utilizing a matrix obtained from the experimental results, simultaneous measurement of temperature and bending can be achieved. Due to its compact structure and high sensitivity, the proposed novel SI-FG sensor can be used as a competitive all-fiber sensor for structural health monitoring and 3D-shape sensing.Index Terms: Optical fiber sensor, long period fiber grating, superimposed fiber grating, simultaneous measure.
Read full abstract