Principles and Application of Polyimide Fiber Bragg Gratings for Surface Strain Measurement

Although theoretical investigation has demonstrated that fewer strain transfer layers imply a greater strain transfer ratio, as well as increased accuracy, most researchers are still focused on investigating encapsulated Fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) in surface strain measurements. This is because, in a traditional view, bare FBGs are too fragile to be mounted on the substrate for measuring surface strain. Polyimide FBGs may provide a better balance point between accuracy and protection. A new method to measure surface strain with polyimide fiber Bragg gratings is proposed. Bare polyimide FBGs have a polyimide coating, but like regular non-coated FBGs. This gives polyimide FBGs a higher strain transfer ratio and response frequency. Bare polyimide FBGs can be considered as uncoated FBGs. The coupling of the matrix material of polyimide FBGs is improved as compared to FBGs without coating. In order to verify the capacity for surface strain measurement, polyimide FBGs are mounted to obtain the surface strain of a concrete specimen with SM130-700 interrogator from Micron Optics Incorporation (MOI) with a sampling frequency maximum of 2000 Hz. The experiment demonstrates that polyimide FBGs work well even in dynamic surface strain measurements such as explosion measurement. Validation experiment in this paper also proposed that fewer strain transfer layers can increase dynamic response frequency and coupling between FBG and substrate.