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Distributed optical fiber systems (DOFSs) are an emerging and innovative technology that allows long-range and continuous strain/temperature monitoring with a high resolution. Sensing cables are either surface-mounted or embedded into civil engineering structures to ensure long-term structural monitoring and early crack detection. However, strain profiles measured in the optical fiber (OF) may differ from the actual strain in the structure due to the shear transfer through the intermediate material layers between the OF and the host material (i.e., in the protective coating of the sensing cable and in the adhesive). Therefore, OF sensors need to be qualified to provide accurate quantitative strain measurements. This study presents a methodology for the qualification of a DOFS. This qualification is achieved through the calculation of the so-called mechanical transfer function (MTF), which relates the strain profile in the OF to the actual strain profile in the structure. It is proposed to establish a numerical modeling of the system, in which the mechanical parameters are calibrated from experiments. A specific surface-mounted sensing cable connected to an optical frequency domain reflectometry interrogator is considered as a case study. It was found that (i) tensile and pull-out tests can provide detailed information about materials and interfaces of the numerical model; (ii) the calibrated model made it possible to compute strain profiles along the OF and therefore to calculate the MTF of the system; (iii) the results proved to be consistent with experimental data collected on a cracked concrete beam during a four-point bending test. This paper is organized as follows: first, the technical background related to DOFSs and interrogators is briefly recalled, the MTF is defined and the above-mentioned methodology is presented. In the second part, the methodology is applied to a specific cable. Finally, a comparison with experimental evidence validates the proposed approach.

Although optical fiber sensors have been developed for 30 years, there is a gap between lab experiments and field applications. This article focuses on specific methods developed to evaluate the whole sensing chain, with an emphasis on (i) commercially-available optoelectronic instruments and (ii) sensing cable. A number of additional considerations for a successful pairing of these two must be taken into account for successful field applications. These considerations are further developed within this article and illustrated with practical applications of water leakage detection in dikes and concrete structures monitoring, making use of distributed temperature and strain sensing based on Rayleigh, Raman, and Brillouin scattering in optical fibers. They include an adequate choice of working wavelengths, dedicated localization processes, choices of connector type, and further include a useful selection of traditional reference sensors to be installed nearby the optical fiber sensors, as well as temperature compensation in case of strain sensing.

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The paper reports results of the long distance (25 km range) distributed optical fiber sensing by means of Tunable Wavelength Coherent Optical Time Domain Reflectometry (TW-COTDR) method. The tests were designed to verify the accuracy and repeatability of the method in long distance measurements, as well as compatibility with various optical fiber types. Results demonstrate the capability of the method to detect strain or temperature changes over long distances. This proposed method is compared to Brillouin sensing techniques, into the same fibers. Unlike the Brillouin-based methods, measurement uncertainty does not increase with increasing distance. We demonstrated 0.16°C uncertainty at 21km.

This paper describes the use of Digital Image Correlation (DIC) techniques for the cracking assessment of reinforced concrete (RC) massive beams and walls. DIC is known to provide accurate and detailed information on displacement and strain fields. Non-contact measurements can be used to evaluate concrete cracking of destructive tests carried out on a wide range of specimen scales. When applied to large RC structures tested outdoors or in difficultly controllable conditions, DIC-based methods may lead to erroneous results. In this study a post-processing procedure is presented to cope with noisy full-field measurements. The proposed cracking assessment approach is validated on a large experimental campaign. Four points bending tests are carried out on RC beams: firstly on full-scale rectangular beams and then on mock-ups scaled down by 1/3. In addition, fours RC walls are tested under in-plane cyclic shear up to failure. Digital images taken throughout the tests are processed by DIC techniques to provide in-plane displacement and strain fields. Full-field measurements are post-processed by the noise-filtering technique and the cracks patterns are identified. Crack widths are measured and compared with measurements obtained from conventional point-based sensors (linear variable differential transformer LVDT and fibre-optic FO transducers). The proposed DIC-based post-processing provides accurate estimation of cracks width for most of the tests. The analyses carried out on the two groups of RC beams show a scale-effect on the cracks width.