Role of Flexible Macro Fibre Composite (MFC) Actuator on Bragg Wavelength Tuning in Microstructure Polymer Optical Fibre Long Period Grating for Strain Sensing Applications*

Abstract

The microstructure polymer optical fibre (mPOF) inscribed long period grating (LPG) offers a wide field of application in strain sensors arena within the materials elastic limit. Flexible innovative macro fibre composite (MFC) actuator generates electromechanical force under DC driving voltage. We propose a novel method for Bragg wavelength blue shifting through stretch tuning of mPOF LPG in axial direction under applied DC voltage on attached MFC with LPG. The grating period of mPOF LPG changes refractive index and causes blue shift of Bragg grating fibre wavelength. The shifting governs on the values of generated electromechanically strain transfer from flexible MFC to mPOF LPG and they have potential applications in strain sensor.

Extremely narrow resonances, giant sensitivity and field enhancement in low-loss waveguide sensors

“…For our calculations, the discretization for a particular spectrum has been adjusted to get coverage of the resonance lineshape by at least 1000 nodes resulting in the relative error of ∼0.1%. We used the following values of the refractive indices: n p =1.7786+i3.864×10 −8 for SF11 [37], n rf =0.19715+i3.09 for Au [38], n sl =1.3395 for Cytop [39], n w =1.48998 for PMMA [40] and n s =1.3317+i1.47×10 −8 for water [41].…”

Fluorescent all-fiber light source based on micro-capillaries and on microstructured optical fibers terminated with a microbulb

“…Most LPG-based sensors operate in the near infrared range which imposes the use of expensive detectors, while those working in the visible range [8,9] can use significantly cheaper detectors, resulting in reduced costs for the entire system.…”