Highly Sensitive and Widely Dynamic Fiber-Coiled Deformation Sensor Immune from External Disturbances

This paper describes a double fiber-coiled interferometric deformation sensor fabricated using paired polarization maintaining single-mode fibers. A change in bending-induced birefringence plays a fundamental role in the sensor performance as the fiber-coil is being deformed across its cross-section. Differential optical heterodyne detection processes allow us to implement two-mode operations; one is widely dynamic operation and the other highly sensitive operation around a target region. The deformation sensitivity for one-turn fiber-coil is 2.5 deg/mm for the widely dynamic operation, whereas 9.5X10 deg/mm for the highly sensitive operation. The double fiber-coiled deformation sensor can eliminate external, undesirable temperature disturbances.