FBG stress-sensibilized monitor for railway switch pole on-line monitoring

Abstract

The fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensing technology is used to dynamically monitor multiple parameters of railway switch machine poles, including time of movement, direction and quantity of loading and locking force, and states of loading resistance. This paper presents the design and implementation of a railway switch pole strain on-line monitoring system based on the FBG stress-sensibilized monitor for a Siemens S700K switch machine. The ring shape FBG strain gauge and stress-sensibilized methods significantly increased the monitoring sensitivity. Installing approaches adapted the harsh environment in the railway application. The monitoring results showed the high sensitivity and high reliability of this monitoring system. This application provides a long-term and on-line detecting method which could meet railway switch condition monitoring demands of more than 100,000 switch machines in the country.

Study on the non-contact FBG vibration sensor and its application

“…Compared with traditional sensors, fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors are anti-EMI, corrosion-resistant, high temperature, small volume, and light weight, and they are easy to conduct a long-distance transmission dynamic distributed measurement. Therefore, its applications are also attracting more and more attention, which are widely used in health monitoring, vibration measurement, and other areas [3][4][5][6]. Many scholars also designed some vibration sensors based on the FBG, used the cantilever beam as elastic body, and pasted FBGs on the surface of the cantilever beam to measure vibration [7,8]; N. Basumallick et al adjusted the distance between the FBG and neutral surface of the cantilever beam to increase the vibration sensor sensitivity [9]; Paulo Fernando da Costa Antunes et al selected L-shaped beam as an elastomer, and mixed the mass on the end of beam which was supported by spring, and another end beam was connected with the FBG, to monitor structure vibration [10]; He Jun et al used spring to convert the displacement of the measured body to force, which was imposed to the pasted FBG cantilever beam, to measure the displacement [11]; Yinyan Weng et al also combined round diaphragm with L-shaped rigid beam to design a contact type of acceleration sensor for applications of structure health monitoring and earthquake monitoring [12]; some scholars used the flat diaphragm as the elastic body, added a mass in the center of flat diaphragm, through inertia force of mass caused the flat diaphragm deformation, and then made the FBG's central wavelength drift, to obtain vibration acceleration of the measured body [13]; literature [14,15] proposed an FBG based on the non-contact magnetic coupling displacement sensor to achieve the non-contact measurement of the displacement of the objects.…”