Fiber optic acoustic sensors for crack growth diagnostics

There are to be some cracks on the material degradation part or the stress concentration parts of the main members, which carry on over-loads, of structures. Because these cracks can be used to evaluate the structural health status, it is important to monitor the crack growth for maintaining the structural safety. In this study, the fiber Bragg grating sensor with a drop ball was developed as a sensor for crack growth detection of an existing crack. The crack growth detection sensor was constructed with three parts: a probe part, a wavelength control light source and receiver part, and an impact part. The probe part was just formed with a fiber Bragg grating optical fiber. The wavelength control light source part was composed of a current supplying circuit, a DFB laser diode, and a TEC control circuit for wavelength control. Also, the impact part was just implemented by dropping a steel ball. The performance of this sensor was confirmed by the experiments of the crack detection with an aluminum plate having one existing crack. According to these experiments, the difference of the sensor signal outputs was correlated with the crack length. So, it was confirmed that this sensor could be applied to monitor the crack growth.