BOTDA based water-filling and preloading test of spiral case structure

In the water-filling and preloading test, the sensing cables were installed on the surface of steel spiral case and in the surrounding concrete to monitor the strain distribution of several cross-sections by using Brillouin Optical Time Domain Analysis (BOTDA), a kind of distributed optical fiber sensing (DOFS) technology. The average hoop strain of the spiral case was about $330{\mu}{\varepsilon}$ and $590{\mu}{\varepsilon}$ when the water-filling pressure in the spiral case was 2.6 MPa and 4.1 MPa. The difference between the measured and the calculated strain was only about $50{\mu}{\varepsilon}$. It was the first time that the stress adjustment of the spiral case was monitored by the sensing cable when the pressure was increased to 1 MPa and the residual strain of $20{\mu}{\varepsilon}$ was obtained after preloading. Meanwhile, the shrinkage of $70{\sim}100{\mu}{\varepsilon}$ of the surrounding concrete was effectively monitored during the depressurization. It is estimated that the width of the gap between the steel spiral case and the surrounding concrete was 0.51 ~ 0.75 mm. BOTDA based distributed optical fiber sensing technology can obtain continuous strain of the structure and it is more reliable than traditional point sensor. The strain distribution obtained by BOTDA provides strong support for the design and optimization of the spiral case structure.