A novel lateral force sensor based on a core-offset multimode fiber interferometer with intensity-based interrogation technique is reported. An offset between the cores of the single-mode fiber and multimode fiber is made to produce high extinction ratio. When a lateral force is applied to a short section of the multimode fiber, the extinction ratio decreases with the interference phase almost unchanged. In addition to serving as a sensing head, the multimode fiber can also act as a filter to realize lateral force measurement by determining the power change from a power meter. Experimental results show that the power ratio change has a linear relationship with respect to the applied lateral force, and the resolution of the sensor configuration is about 0.01 N.

Date Published: 27 April 2009
PDF: 5 pages
Proc. SPIE 7316, Fiber Optic Sensors and Applications VI, 73160U (27 April 2009); doi: 10.1117/12.818989

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7316:
Fiber Optic Sensors and Applications VI
Eric Udd; Henry H. Du; Anbo Wang, Editor(s)