Design and experiments on a wide range fiber Bragg grating sensor for health monitoring of coal mines

The tunnel collapse problem of coal mine is very common and its damage is very serious. It also seriously endangers people's lives and property safety. At present, a variety of instruments are used for tunnel roof structure health monitoring in most of the coal mines at home and abroad. In this paper, a displacement sensor using optical fiber grating technology was designed, which could be used to prevent the problem of coal mine tunnel collapse by monitoring the coal mine tunnel roof displacement. Firstly, finite element analysis was demonstrated to simulate the stress and displacement of coal mine tunnel roof to determine where to install the sensor. Then the characteristics of the fiber Bragg grating sensor were analyzed in detail and the sensor structure was designed according to the actual requirements in the coal mine. At last, the feasibility of the whole system was experimentally verified. The cross-sensitivity of the temperature and displacement issue with FBG sensors could be eliminated by using matched pairs of FBG. The measuring range of 50 mm and the measurement resolution up to 0.06 mm could be obtained with the proposed sensor. (C) 2014 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.