Structural health monitoring using a fiber optic polarimetric sensor and a fiber optic curvature sensor - static and dynamic test

In this paper, a fiber optic polarimetric sensor (FOPS) and a fiber optic curvature sensor (FOCS), for global health\damage monitoring of an aluminum specimen with different cracks, are theoretically and experimentally analyzed. The relation between the sensor sensitivity and the specimen stiffness is given and a static damage factor (SDF) is introduced to describe the stiffness reduction of the specimen. Based on this parameter, the experimental results show that the two sensors can be used as quantitative damage indicators for the global health monitoring of structures. The dynamic damage factor (DDF) is also introduced to describe the damage level of cracked beams. The relation between DDF and the frequency of nth mode is deduced. The experimental results from FOPS show that the DDF is an alternate measure of the damage and is shown to be similar to the SDF.