A fiber optic Bragg grating (FBG) sensor and interrogation scheme has been designed to capture the momentary peak pressure forces in the nip of two adjacent paper machine rolls. The spatial distribution of these nip forces along circumference and length of the roll, for production speeds of up to 2000 m/min are investigated. Additionally, this FBG sensor system measures the temperature distribution in the roll cover. FBG sensor embedding has been optimized for the implementation of pressure force measurements in various roll cover materials. High strength draw tower grating (DTG) sensor arrays were used for the embedding process combined with spectrometric interrogation and autonomous power supply technologies. This results in an extremely robust fiber optic sensor system for operation at rotation speeds of 700 rpm, equivalent to centrifugal accelerations of 300 G. These measurements enable immediate quality control during various stages of the high-speed paper production process.

Date Published: 7 November 2012
PDF: 4 pages
Proc. SPIE 8421, OFS2012 22nd International Conference on Optical Fiber Sensors, 8421AZ (7 November 2012); doi: 10.1117/12.970314

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8421:
OFS2012 22nd International Conference on Optical Fiber Sensors
Yanbiao Liao; Wei Jin; David D. Sampson; Ryozo Yamauchi; Youngjoo Chung; Kentaro Nakamura; Yunjiang Rao, Editor(s)