Study on distributed fiber optic crack sensor for concrete structures

In this paper a novel distributed fiber optic crack sensor based on optical time domain reflectometer (OTDR) is introduced. A novel packaging of the crack sensor is proposed. The bare optical fiber is embedded into the polymer which protects the fiber from fracture and transfers the deformation of the structure to the fiber. Experiment is carried out to evaluate the performance of the distributed fiber optic crack sensor. The primary results show that the fiber optic crack sensor has good linearity between the bend loss and the crack open size. Further experiment is being undertaken.