• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.40-46
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• 2006

This paper presents a novel fiber optic accelerometer system for monitoring vibration of large-size structures. The system is composed of one (or multiple) sensor head, a light control unit and a signal processing unit. The sensing mechanism of the sensor head is based on a novel integration of the moire fringe phenomenon with fiber optics to achieve a robust performance in addition to its immunity to EM interference, easy cabling, and low cost. In this paper, a prototype of the fiber optic accelerometer system has been developed successfully. A low-cost light control unit has been developed to drive the system's optic and electronic components. A unique algorithm has also been developed to derive the sensor's acceleration from the raw signals of the light control unit; it is implemented via a separate signal processing unit. Finally, the shaking table tests successfully demonstrate the performance and the potential of the moire fringe fiber optic sensor system to monitor the health of civil infrastructures.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.291-298
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• 2007

This paper presents a signal processing algorithm to control the dynamic bandwidth of a single-degree-of-freedom (SDF) dynamic sensor system. An accelerometer is a representative SDF sensor system. In this paper, a moire-fringe-based fiber optic accelerometer is newly used for the test of the algorithm. The accelerometer is composed of one mass, one damper and one spring as a SDF dynamic system. In order to increase the dynamic bandwidth of the accelerometer, it is needed to increase the spring constant or decrease the mass. However, there are mechanical difficulties of this adjustment. Therefore, the presented signal processing algorithm is very effective to overcome the difficulties because it is just adjustment in the signal processing software. In this paper, the novel fiber optic accelerometer is introduced shortly, and the algorithm is applied to the fiber optic accelerometer to control its natural frequency and damping ratio. Several simulations and experiments are carried out to prove the performance of the algorithm. As a result, it is shown that the presented signal processing algorithm is a good way to broaden the dynamic bandwidth of the fiber optic accelerometer.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.373-379
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• 2006

Vibration-based structural health monitoring is one of non-destructive evaluation (NDE) techniques for civil infrastructures. This paper presents a novel fiber optic accelerometer system to monitor civil engineering structures and a successful application of the novel sensor system for measuring ambient vibration of a real building structure. This sensor system integrates the Moire fringe phenomenon with fiber optics to achieve accurate and reliable measurements. The sensor system is immune to electromagnetic (EM) interference making it suitable for difficult applications in such environments involving strong EM fields, electrical spark-induced explosion risks, and cabling problems, prohibiting the use of conventional electromagnetic accelerometers. A prototype sensor system has been developed, together with a signal processing software. The experimental studies demonstrated the high-performance of the fiber optic sensor system. Especially, the sensor was successfully used for monitoring a real building on UCI (University of California Irvine, USA).