Curvature optical fiber sensor by using bend enhanced method

Deflection curvature measurement can offer a number of advantages compared with the well-established strain measurement alternative. It is able to measure thin structure; fiber has no resistance with force, which leads to a high precision. There are many kinds of curvature gauges with different operation principles. A low-cost curvature optical fiber sensor using bend enhanced method to improve its curvature measurement sensitivity was developed in recent years. This sensor can distinguish between convex bending and concave bending and has a good linearity in measuring large curvature deformation. Whisper gallery ray theory and Monte Carlo simulation are new achievements by computer experiment. The operation mechanism of this curvature optical fiber sensor is presented based on light scattering theory. The attenuation is ascribed to the transmission mode changing by the curvature of the fiber, which affects the attenuation of the surface scattering. The mathematical model of relationship among light loss, bending curvature, surface roughness, and parameters of the fiber's configuration is also presented. We design different kinds of shapes of sensitive zones; each zone has different parameters. Through detecting their output optical attenuations in different curvatures and fitting the results by exponential decaying functions, the proposed model is demonstrated by experimental results. Also, we compare the experimental results with the theoretical analysis and discuss the sensitivity dependence on bending direction.