Submitted by Fabio Sobreira Campos da Costa (fabio.sobreira@ufpe.br) on 2016-07-20T15:27:06Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Dissertação-digital.pdf: 2703779 bytes, checksum: 932fadac81fdbfd0fee52b9e614ccf40 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-20T15:27:06Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Dissertação-digital.pdf: 2703779 bytes, checksum: 932fadac81fdbfd0fee52b9e614ccf40 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-07-20 / Esta dissertação apresenta a construção e caracterização de um protótipo de cabeça sensora óptica para medição da corrosão em estruturas metálicas que têm o zinco como elemento de proteção. O elemento sensor consiste de uma fibra óptica com ponta metalizada com zinco. A fabricação da cabeça sensora envolve a clivagem, limpeza e deposição do metal. A caracterização foi realizada colocando o elemento sensor num sistema de medição óptica que mede o sinal óptico refletido pelo metal depositado na face da fibra. Foram estudados três métodos de deposição: térmica, por spray metálico e por sputtering. Porém, a deposição por sputtering foi a única que se mostrou ser mais adequada na construção do elemento sensor. Os resultados da medição pelo sistema proposto sugerem ser possível monitorar a corrosão do metal na ponta da fibra pela modulação do sinal óptico refletido. Desta forma, ao medir o tempo entre a intensidade da luz refletida máxima e mínima, foi possível calcular a taxa de corrosão do zinco. Isso sugere que as cabeças construídas, nos experimentos desta dissertação, têm um grande potencial para serem utilizadas num sistema óptico de monitoramento da corrosão em estruturas galvanizadas. / This dissertation presents the construction and characterization of a prototype optical sensor head for measuring corrosion on metal structures that have zinc as a protective element. The sensor element consists of an optical fiber with metalized face with zinc. The manufacture of the sensor head involves the cleavage, cleaning and metal deposition. Characterization was made by placing the sensor element in an optical measuring system that measures the optical signal reflected by the metal deposited on the face of the fiber. Three methods of deposition were studied, thermal, by metal spraying and sputtering. However, the sputtering deposition was the only one that was more appropriate in the construction of the sensor element. The measurement results by the proposed system suggest that it is possible to monitor metal corrosion on the tip of the fiber optic signal modulation reflected. Therefore, when measuring the time between intensity maximum and minimum reflected light, it was possible to calculate the zinc corrosion rate. This suggests that the heads built, in this dissertation, have great potential to be used in the optical system of monitoring corrosion in galvanized structures.

The financial requirements between fiber optic sensors and conventional sensors are gradually declining, which, despite many advatages and wide range of applicationas, has slowed down the demand for these sensors. With the demand for fiber optic sensors also grow the requirements for the parameters of these sensors. This thesis deals with distributed temperature fiber optic sensors. Non--linear phenomen in optical fibers, such as Raman scattering is used for measuring with these sensors. This scatterin was used to obtain information about temperature, which effected the optical cable under the test.

Recently, adding more lanes becomes less and less feasible, which is no longer an applicable solution for the traffic congestion problem due to the increment of vehicles. Using the existing infrastructure more efficiently with better traffic control and management is the realistic solution. An effective traffic management requires the use of monitoring technologies to extract traffic parameters that describe the characteristics of vehicles and their movement on the road. A three-dimension glass fiber-reinforced polymer packaged fiber Bragg grating sensor (3D GFRP-FBG) is introduced for the traffic monitoring system. The proposed sensor network was installed for validation at the Cold Weather Road Research Facility in Minnesota (MnROAD) facility of Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) in MN. A vehicle classification system based on the proposed sensor network has been validated. The vehicle classification system uses support vector machine (SVM), Neural Network (NN), and K-Nearest Neighbour (KNN) learning algorithms to classify vehicles into categories ranging from small vehicles to combination trucks. The field-testing results from real traffic show that the developed system can accurately estimate the vehicle classifications with 98.5 % of accuracy. Also, the proposed sensor network has been validated for low-speed and high-speed WIM measurements in flexible pavement. Field testing validated that the longitudinal component of the sensor has a measurement accuracy of 86.3% and 89.5% at 5 mph and 45 mph vehicle speed, respectively. A performed parametric study on the stability of the WIM system shows that the loading position is the most significant parameter affecting the WIM measurements accuracy compared to the vehicle speed and pavement temperature. Also the system shows the capability to estimate the location of the loading position to enhance the system accuracy.

No description available.

Optical fibers are getting significant considerations in the field of the sensors and sensing beyond its applications in optical communications. Because of several advantages, e.g., low profile of the sensors, immunity to electromagnetic noises, the ability of multiplexing, etc., the use of the fiber optic sensor is increasing in the field of physical, chemical, and biomedical sensing. In this study, we have developed two new fiber optic sensors based on fiber loop ringdown technique (FLRD) and have demonstrated their applications in the field of sensing. In the first part of this study, we report on the development of a high-sensitivity FLRD strain sensor. For the design of the strain sensor, the fiber loop was cut at the middle, and then the two fiber ends from broken fiber loop were cleaved and aligned carefully to couple the light from one end to another end. Any strain during the measurement changes the alignment of the fiber ends, consequently, the ringdown time changes. With this scheme, the FLRD strain sensor has shown the strain detection limit of 65 nanostrain, which is five times better than any FLRD strain sensors reported in the literature. Furthermore, The FLRD strain sensors were successfully embedded into prestressed concrete-beams.The FLRD strain sensor was able to monitor stress on a post-tensioned rod, as well as the load applied on the concrete-beam during the three-point loading test, thus exhibiting immense potential in structural health monitoring. For the chemical sensor, a new scheme of interrogation for a fiber optic surface plasmon sensor was developed with the use of the FLRD technique. A gold nanolayer was deposited on an uncladded fiber section, and the fiber section was integrated into the FLRD system as a sensor head. The gold layer facilitates for increased interaction of sample of interest, with the light pulse confined in the fiber waveguide. Moreover, with the affinity of the gold with specific biomolecules, the sensor has the potential for applications in biochemical sensing. In the experiment, the SP-FLRD sensor was used for refractive index sensing, and index detection limit of 4.6×10-5 RIU was achieved.

This dissertation presents the structure, operational principle and mathematical model of a novel high speed fiber optic spectrometer (HSFOS). In addition, the performance analysis is conducted and preliminary experimental results are listed and discussed. Such a spectrometer is highly desired by the ever-increasing applications of fiber optic sensors. In the recent decades, a variety of fiber optic sensors have been proposed, built and tested. Compared to their electronic counterparts, fiber optic sensors although still under development, are preferred more by certain industrial and medical applications which benefit from their unique properties such as immunity to electromagnetic interference, ability to withstand harsh environments and composition of purely dielectric materials. In recent years, new fiber optic sensors have been designed for applications where high response frequency up to a few hundred KHz is required while advantages of high accuracy and large dynamic range must be maintained. The bottle neck then emerged in the signal demodulation part of the sensor system. The quadrature phase detection could achieve high demodulation speed but with small dynamic range, medium accuracy and measurement ambiguity. The white light interferometry could provide a solution for high accuracy and large dynamic range measurement without ambiguity because of its absolute measurement nature. However the signal demodulation speed is limited due to the low spectrum acquisition rate of the existing spectrometers. The new HSFOS utilizes time domain dispersion of the sampled incoming light by dispersive fiber rather than the spatial dispersion employed by traditional spectrometers. In addition the signal that represents the spectrum of the light is naturally a serial signal which can be detected by a single detector and recorded by a high speed data acquisition device. Theoretical study of the operation principle is made and a mathematical model for the spectrometer is developed based on Marcuse's previous work. One major difference of the new derivation is that the propagation constant is expanded about the center circular frequency of each monochromatic light pulse instead of the center frequency of the chromatic light pulse which makes the physical picture of the chromatic light pulse evolution in a dispersive fiber clearer and facilitates both the analytical and numerical analysis. The profile of the dispersed chromatic light pulse could be treated as the superposition of all the dispersed monochromatic light pulses. Another major difference is the Taylor's series of the propagation constant is not truncated as it is in those previous work, which improves the accuracy of the model. Moreover, an approximate model is made which could further reduce the computation tasks in numerical simulations. Performance analysis for accuracy, resolution, speed and noise are conducted through numerical simulations based on the model and the experimental results. The sources of two different errors and their effects on accuracy are discussed respectively. The effects on spectral resolution by the properties of the modulation pulse and the fiber dispersion are studied. The results indicate that by using a rectangle modulation pulse under certain conditions, the resolution can be improved. The speed analysis gives that the spectrum acquisition rate can reach 1 million frames per second when the spectral width is less than 100 nm. In the noise analysis, the erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) is determined to be the dominant noise source. But by using two EDFAs, the overall signal to noise ratio is improved by 9.2 dB. The preliminary experimental results for FP sensor and FBG sensor signal demodulation are presented. The HSFOS for FP sensor signal demodulation achieves 15 nm resolution. By using the oversampling method, the HSFOS for FBG sensor signal demodulation achieves 0.05 nm spectral positioning resolution. / Ph. D.

The health monitoring of smart structures in civil engineering is becoming more and more important as in-situ structural monitoring would greatly reduce structure life-cycle costs and improve reliability. The distributed strain and temperature sensing is highly desired in large structures where strain and temperature at over thousand points need to be measured simultaneously. It is difficult to carry out this task using conventional electrical strain sensors. Fiber optic sensors provide an excellent opportunity to fulfill this need due to their capability to multiplex many sensors along a single fiber cable. Numerous research studies have been conducted in past decades to increase the number of sensors to be multiplexed in a distributed sensor network. This dissertation presents detailed research work on the analysis, design, fabrication, testing, and evaluation of an intrinsic Fabry-Perot fiber optic sensor for quasi-distributed strain and temperature measurements. The sensor is based on two ultra-short and broadband reflection fiber Bragg gratings. One distinct feature of this sensor is its ultra low optical insertion loss, which allows a significant increase in the sensor multiplexing capability. Using a simple integrated sensor interrogation unit and an optical spectrum based signal processing algorithm, many sensors can be interrogated along a single optical fiber with high accuracy, high resolution and large dynamic range. Based on the experimental results and theoretical analysis, it is expected that more than 500 sensors can be multiplexed with little crosstalk using a frequency-division multiplexing technology. With this research, it is possible to build an easy fabrication, robust, high sensitivity and quasi-distributed fiber optic sensor network that can be operated reliably even in harsh environments or extended structures. This research was supported in part by U.S. National Science Foundation under grant CMS-0427951. / Ph. D.

Measurement of physical parameters in harsh environments (high pressure, high temperature, highly corrosive, high electromagnetic interference) is often desired in a variety of areas, such as aerospace, automobile, energy, military systems, and industrial processes. Pressure and temperature are among the most important of these parameters. A typical example is pressure monitoring in jet engine compressors to help detect and control undesirable air flow instabilities, namely rotating stall and surge. However, the temperatures inside a compressor could reach beyond 600°C for today's large engines. Current fiber-optic sensor can operate up to about 300°C and even the most widely employed semiconductor sensors are limited below 500°C. The objective of this research is to push the limit of fiber-optic sensing technology in harsh environment applications for both pressure and temperature measurements by developing novel sensing structures, fabrication techniques, and signal processing algorithms. An all-fused-silica pressure sensor has been demonstrated which is fabricated on the tip of a fiber with a diameter no larger than 125μm. The sensor was able to function beyond the current limit and operate into the 600~700°C range. Also a temperature sensor has been developed using sapphire fibers and wafers for ultra-high temperature measurement as high as 1600°C. This effort will generate more understanding regarding sapphire fiber's high temperature properties and could possibly lead to novel designs of pressure sensor for beyond 1000°C. Both sensors have been field tested in real-world harsh environments and demonstrated to be reliably and robust. In this dissertation, the design, fabrication, and testing of the sensors are discussed in detail. The system and signal processing techniques are presented. The plan and direction for future work are also suggested with an aim of further pushing the operating limit of fiber-optic sensors. / Ph. D.

High voltage power transformer is one of the most important and expensive components in today's power transmission and distribution systems. Any overlooked critical fault generated inside a power transformer may lead to a transformer catastrophic failure which could not only cause a disruption to the power system but also significant equipment damage. Accurate and prompt information on the health state of a transformer is thus the critical prerequisite for an asset manager to make a vital decision on a transformer with suspicious conditions. Partial discharge (PD) is not only a precursor of insulation degradation, but also a primary factor to accelerate the deterioration of the insulation system in a transformer. Monitoring of PD activities and the concentration of PD generated combustible gases dissolved in the transformer oil has been proven to be an effective procedure for transformer health state estimation. However current commercially available sensors can only be installed outside of transformers and offer indirect or delayed information. This research is aimed to investigate and develop several sensor techniques for transformer health monitoring. The first work is an optical fiber extrinsic Fabry-Perot interferometric sensor for PD detection. By filling SF6 into the sensor air cavity of the extrinsic Fabry-Perot interferometer sensor, the last potential obstacle that prevents this kind of sensors from being installed inside transformers has been removed. The proposed acoustic sensor multiplexing system is stable and more economical than the other sensor multiplexing methods that usually require the use of a tunable laser or filters. Two dissolved gas analysis (DGA) methods for dissolved hydrogen or acetylene measurement are also proposed and demonstrated. The dissolved hydrogen detection is based on hydrogen induced fiber loss and the dissolved acetylene detection is by direct oil transmission measurement. / Ph. D.

From the monitoring of deep ocean conditions to the imaging and exploration of the vast universe, optical sensors are playing a unique, critical role in all areas of scientific research. Optical fiber sensors, in particular, are not only widely used in daily life such as for medical inspection, structural health monitoring, and environmental surveillance, but also in high-tech, high-security applications such as missile guidance or monitoring of aircraft engines and structures. Measurements of physical parameters are required in harsh environments including high pressure, high temperature, highly electromagnetically-active and corrosive conditions. A typical example is fossil fuel-based power plants. Unfortunately, current optical fiber sensors for high-temperature monitoring can work only for single point measurement, as traditional fully-distributed temperature sensing techniques are restricted for temperatures below 800°C due to the limitation of the fragile character of silica fiber under high temperature. In this research, a first-of-its-kind technology was developed which pushed the limits of fully distributed temperature sensing (DTS) in harsh environments by exploring the feasibility of DTS in optical sapphire waveguides. An all sapphire fiber-based Raman DTS system was demonstrated in a 3-meters long sapphire fiber up to a temperature of 1400°C with a spatial resolution of 16.4cm and a standard deviation of a few degrees Celsius. In this dissertation, the design, fabrication, and testing of the sapphire fiber-based Raman DTS system are discussed in detail. The plan and direction for future work are also suggested with an aim for commercialization. / Ph. D.