Optical signal processing for fiber Bragg grating based wear sensors

In this study, we propose a simplified signal processing scheme for fiber Bragg grating (FBG) based wear sensing. Instead of using a chirped FBG and detecting the bandwidth, we use uniform gratings as sensors and measure the optical power reflected by the sensing grating to determine the length of the sensor grating, hence detect the wear. We demonstrate by the experiments that the proposed method is feasible and practical. The advantage of the proposed method lies in the fact that structure of the wear sensing system is simplified and therefore the cost can be significantly reduced. The principle of the proposed method, the design of the wear sensor, and the experiments are described.