A novel accelerometer based on a strain-chirped optical fiber Bragg grating (FBG) is proposed. The FBG is glued in a slanted direction onto the lateral side of a right-angled triangle cantilever beam with a mass bonded on its free end. Vertical acceleration applied to the cantilever beam leads to a uniform bending along the beam length. As a result, the FBG is chirped and its reflection bandwidth changes linearly with the applied acceleration. A high sensitivity of 0.679 nm/g has been achieved in the experiment. The experimental results of the sensor are compared with the results of a conventional accelerometer for the dynamic measurements. This sensor is temperature insensitive, owning to the temperature-independence nature of reflection bandwidth of the FBG.

Date Published: 25 November 2009
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 7634, Optical Sensors and Biophotonics, 763413 (25 November 2009); doi: 10.1117/12.851995

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7634:
Optical Sensors and Biophotonics
Xingde Li; Qingming Luo; Vasilis Ntziachristos; Yoshiaki Yasuno, Editor(s)