Design parameter evaluation of a metal recoated Fiber Bragg Grating sensors for measurement of cryogenic temperature or stress in superconducting devices

There are plenty of complex physical phenomena which remain to be studied and verified experimentally for building an optimized superconducting magnet. The main problem for experimental validations is due to the unavailability of suitable sensors. This paper proposes a Fiber Bragg Gratings (FBG) sensor for this purpose which allows access to the local temperature/stress state. To measure the low temperature (20 K), FBG can be recoated with materials having high thermal expansion coefficient (HTCE). This can induce a thermal stress for a temperature change, which in turn increases the sensitivity of the sensor. The performance of such sensors has been experimentally studied and reported in earlier paper [Rajinikumar R. Suesser M, Narayankhedkar KG, Krieg G, Atrey MD. Performance evaluation of metallic coated Fiber Bragg Grating sensors for sensing cryogenic temperature. Cryogenics 2008;48:142-7]. This paper aims at evaluation and determination of different design parameters like coating materials, coating thickness, grating period and the grating length for design of better performance FBG sensor for low temperature/stress measurements. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.