Internal strain monitoring of filament wound pressure tanks using embedded fiber Bragg grating sensors

In-situ structural health monitoring of filament wound pressure tanks were conducted during water-pressurizing test using embedded fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors. We need to monitor inner strains during working in order to verify the health condition of pressure tanks more accurately because finite element analyses on filament wound pressure tanks usually show large differences between inner and outer strains. Fiber optic sensors, especially FBG sensors can be easily embedded into the composite structures contrary to conventional electric strain gages (ESGs). In addition, many FBG sensors can be multiplexed in single optical fiber using wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) techniques. We fabricated a standard testing and evaluation bottle (STEB) with embedded FBG sensors and performed a water-pressurizing test. In order to increase the survivability of embedded FBG sensors, we suggested a revised fabrication process for embedding FBG sensors into a filament wound pressure tank, which includes a new protecting technique of sensor heads, the grating parts. From the experimental results, it was demonstrated that FBG sensors can be successfully adapted to filament wound pressure tanks for their structural health monitoring by embedding.