Design of an optical fiber sensor for linear thermal expansion measurement

Design and operation of an optical fiber device for temperature sensing and thermal expansion measurement are reported. The modulated intensity has been measured by using a pair of 450 μm core fiber, one acting as the source and the other one as receiving fiber. In this design, the light intensity modulation is based on the relative motion of the optical fibers and a reflective coated lens. By using displacement calibration data for this sensor, the linear thermal expansion of the aluminum rod is determined. This sensor shows an average sensitivity of about 11.3 mV/°C for temperature detection and 7 μm/°C for thermal expansion detection. Device resolution for a linear expansion measurement is about 3 μm for a dynamic range of 600 μm corresponding to a temperature change of 100°C. The measured linear expansion results are checked against the expected theoretical ones and an agreement within ±2 μm is noticed. The operation of this sensor was also compared with other types and some advantages are observed, which verify the capability of this design for such precise measurements.     

海水盐度和温度实时检测的新型光纤传感器研究

提出了一种新颖的用于海水温度和盐度同时实时探测的光纤传感器系统。分别利用半导体材料吸收光谱的临界极限值随温度变化发生移动而导致出射光强改变的特性和待测液体盐度变化引起传输光折射角改变导致接收端光线偏移的性质，通过反射式的结构设计和线阵排列的接收光纤信号传输至海面以上，并由CCD实现对光强峰值信号及其偏移量的采集。传感器由一直角棱镜、本征GaAs单晶体薄片、装有参考液和待测液的水槽、接收光纤阵列等部分组成。理论分析和仿真结果验证了传感器设计的可行性。     

Design and operation of a fiber optic sensor for liquid level detection

Design and construction of an optical fiber sensor for liquid level detection are reported. This sensor operates based on light intensity modulation, and such modulation results from alteration of total internal reflection into partial reflection at the interface. The modulated intensity has been measured by using a pair of fibers, one transmitting source light, another acting as receiving fiber, and a glass prism providing the total and partial reflections. During the level measurements, when a liquid in a vessel touches the 45° faces of the 45-90-45° prism, the total internal reflection is disturbed, and the reflected light is modulated. The performance of this sensor is tested with different source lights including a light emitting diode (LED), a diode laser, and a He–Ne laser. Extinction ratio has been measured for different liquids, and compared. This ratio for water using LED source is about 0.03, for diode laser is 0.006 and for He–Ne laser is 0.003. Although this device was tested as a liquid level sensor, but the distinct results obtained for samples with different index of refractions demonstrate that the reported sensor can also be used as a liquid refractometer.     

High-accuracy surface position sensor based on a two-lens system

Two optical lenses are used to compose a surface position measuring system. A measurand is positioned near the front focal point of the first lens. At the output end of the other lens, a beam splitter is used to split the beam into two paths. One photodetector is positioned before the focal point of the lens in one path and another after the focal point in the other so that the intensities falling onto the two detectors can be adjusted to be equal when the first lens is in focus. This device provides a compact and high-accuracy surface sensor. In this paper, the design and experimental study of the sensor system is described. It is shown that such a sensor embodiment can lead to a resolution of 1 μm.     

Development of One-dimensional Fiber-Optic Radiation Sensor for Measuring Dose Distributions of High Energy Photon Beams

The purpose of this study was to develop a method for measuring the one-dimensional dose distribution of a high-energy photon beam using a miniaturized high-resolution fiber-optic radiation sensor array. The measurements were made by thin plastic optical fibers with organic scintillating fiber sensor probes that emit the visible wavelength of light. The scintillating light is guided to a silicon photodiode array by plastic optical fibers in order to convert light output to an electrical signal. The one-dimensional spatial dependence of photon beam is measured by a one-dimensional fiberoptic sensor array in a poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) phantom. It is shown that this fiber-optic radiation sensor has better spatial resolution than a conventional ionization chamber and much less time is required to measure one-dimensional dose distribution in the high radiation fields. The real-time and the high spatial resolution measurements due to the small detector volume make this system suitable for dosimetry in radiation therapy.     

Design and operation of an evanescent optical fiber sensor

Design and operation of an optical fiber sensor based on the intensity modulation is reported in this article. Two distinct mechanisms are considered for the optical power loss and the sensor operation is explained in terms of these effects. The dominant loss mechanism is found to be the evanescent loss and based on this phenomenon the optical fiber sensor is designed. Performance of this sensor is tested as a liquid level sensor for water and the experimental results are reported. The dry and wet signals for this probe are measured for a series of measurements and important factors concerning the design and operation of sensor are described. The precision of measured values, reproducibility of the results, and the stability of sensing operation as a function of time are reported. Variation of the output reading of the sensor system for different launching power is also investigated. The output signal of an optical fiber sensor in general is nonlinear, but both the signal difference (dry minus wet) and diff/dry signal ratio for the reported sensor show linear dependence with the launching power at intensities below threshold. The reported results are promising and verify the successful operation of such a device as an on/off level switch and also as a liquid level sensor.     

Sensitivity of a Lamb wave sensor with 2 microm AlN membrane

Anti-symmetrical Lamb wave mode A0 presents a large sensitivity to mass loading and can be used in contact with liquids with a small attenuation. The advantages of this system are the possibility to get a large mass sensitivity. The sensitivity increases when the thickness of membrane decreases. Therefore the problem is to obtain thin piezoelectric membranes. A membrane of AlN with a thickness of 2 microm has been made. The measured mass sensitivity with a fluid is 200 cm(2) g(-1). In a practical use point of view, the problem in this kind of sensor is its temperature sensitivity. In order to reduce effective temperature sensitivity, a device with thin metallic strips is presented. On the same membrane two different waves with perpendicular propagating directions are produced. Experimentally, temperature sensitivity is rather different depending on the propagation direction but mass sensitivity is almost the same, this allows distinguishing temperature effects from those due to mass loading on the frequency shift measurements.     

Low-Temperature Radiometric Measurements Using a Silver Halide Optical Fiber and Infrared Optical Devices

In this study, we measured an infrared radiation which is transferred by a silver halide optical fiber from a heat source using a radiometer system for low-temperature measurements. To increase the amount of infrared radiation through the silver halide optical fiber and to the pyroelectric sensor, infrared optical devices used were an infrared focusing lens and a collimator. The relationship between the temperatures of a heat source and the measured radiometer signals were determined. The measurable temperature range of a fiber-optic temperature sensor using a pyroelectric sensor was from 298 to 333 K. It is expected that a noncontact low-temperature sensor using an infrared optical fiber can be developed for medical and industrial usages based on the results of this study.     

Temperature and strain dependence of the power level and frequency of spontaneous Brillouin scattering in optical fibers

The strain dependence of the optical power of Brillouin scattering in optical fibers has been measured for the first time to our knowledge. Together with measurements of the dependence of Brillouin power on temperature and the variation of Brillouin frequency with temperature and strain, we demonstrate, for what we believe to be the first time, the feasibility of a simultaneous temperature and strain sensor based on spontaneous Brillouin scattering.     

Limitations of the Shack–Hartmann sensor for testing optical aspherics

Aspheric lenses and surfaces are increasingly used in modern high-quality optics. Therefore, new measuring methods for an accurate quantification of these aspheres are also necessary. The current approach to quantify aspheres is to apply null systems such as computer-generated holograms as a part of a null lens in a interferometer. An alternative to this method is the Shack–Hartmann wavefront sensor. The dynamic range of this sensor can be adjusted by the optical parameters of the applied microlens array. Hence, large wavefront aberrations can be measured directly without a null lens. However, there are basic limitations in the dynamic range of a Shack–Hartmann sensor (SHS) depending on the curvature of the incident wavefront. In this paper, an analytical expression to determine the strongest wavefront curvature which can be measured with a defined microlens array of an SHS is derived. It allows to calculate the microlens parameters required to measure the wavefront of a test lens. Particularly, the influence of rotational symmetric aspherical wavefront shapes to the dynamic range of an SHS has been studied. A comparison between interferometry and the SHS has been accomplished. Numerical solutions using scalar diffraction theory illustrate the analytical predictions.