tel: 44 141 548 2543
fax: 44 141 553 1955
E-mail:
b.culshaw@eee.strath.ac.uk
Area of Expertise
Fiber optic technology, smart structures, opto mechanical systems
Biography
Brian Culshaw has just completed a five year term as Head of Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering at Strathclyde University which he joined in 1983 after working in Cornell University, Bell Northern Research, University College London and Stanford. He graduated with a BSc in Physics and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from UCL in 1966 and 1970 respectively. He has had a long interest in fibre optic technology evolving more recently into smart structures and opto mechanical systems. He has published five textbooks on fibre sensors and one on smart structures. He has worked in most areas of fibre sensor technology at the research level and taken several through to practical product, some via OptoSci Ltd which he co-founded in 1994. He is a former director of SPIE, and was the founding editor of the International Journal of Optoelectronics. He currently serves as an Associate Editor of Applied Optics and has worked as Special Issue Editor and Editorial Board Member on numerous other journals. He has also chaired or co-chaired numerous conferences in fibre sensors and smart structures. Lecture Title(s)
Fibre Optic Sensors: Bringing Ideas in Optics to Engineering Reality
Fibre sensors enable optical fibre systems to accurately and reliably monitor the world around them. The basic principles of the interactions between the surrounding environment and light transmitted in a fibre have been studied for two decades or more. However turning these ideas into sensor systems takes dedication, persistence and a cohesive multidisciplinary approach to solving a diverse range of application oriented problems. The process is important - and fascinating - and this lecture will highlight some of our practical experiences in going through this process, including the realisation of fibre optic gyroscopes and of fibre optic systems for environmental monitoring.
Smart Structures and Fibre Optics
The concept of the "smart structure" embraces the idea that a mechanical system, aircraft, ship, bridge etc should be capable of monitoring its own condition and reacting to those measurements by implementing appropriate corrective action.
Fibre optics is one technology which promises to play an extremely important part in both the physical and chemical monitoring and this talk will describe some of the technologies which have emerged and are emerging to address this extremely challenging measurement problem. The principles which will be explored include the fibre Bragg grating, distributed sensing systems based upon Brillouin and Raman scatter and also distributed chemical measurement systems capable of monitoring leaks and emissions in both liquid and gaseous phases. We shall see that whilst the sensor technology is available there are also a multiplicity of data interpretation issues which need to be addressed in order to realise the complete effective system.
Gas Spectroscopy for Environmental Monitoring Using Optical Fibre Systems
Optical fibre systems have the enormous benefits of a vast component infrastructure including sources and detectors, and the ability to transmit information over long distances - in communication networks to many tens of kilometres - without repeaters or amplification.
At this level they are potentially very attractive for distributing optical signals to carefully specified points over very wide areas. Consequently environmental monitoring is potentially an attractive application and measurement of gas concentrations is one important prospect.
However most fundamental frequency gas absorption lines are outside the transmission bandwidths of optical fibres so using much weaker overtones is frequently essential. However the convenience of fibre links and the significantly enhanced signal processing available from the component set can more than compensate for the somewhat reduced sensitivities. This talk will explore the scientific and engineering aspects of remote gas spectroscopy using fibre links with particular attention to diode lasers as the optical source. These concepts which are now relatively well understood have been applied to numerous measurement situations of which the most developed is methane and carbon dioxide monitoring for landfill site assessment. Other applications though include combinations of concentration and pressure measurements using spectral broadening and combined velocity and concentration measurements based upon differential Doppler in the absorption bands.
