High-Frequency Vibration Sensor Using a Fiber Laser With a Multicore Fiber Interferometer

We present an interferometric vibration sensor that uses three-core fibers. The transducer is constructed by splicing a segment 20 mm long of a multicore optical fiber (MCF) to a single-mode optical fiber (SMF). The end of the MCF segment is cut off and painted using silver metallic paint. The sensor head is operated in reflection mode. The structure is placed on a polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plate, which is excited with a wide range of frequency signals. The vibrations induce cyclic bending in the MCF segment, resulting in periodic oscillations of the reflected interference spectrum. This device is demonstrated to be suitable to measure vibrations in a frequency range of the order of 300 kHz detecting deformations as small as 0.40 mu m.