Discriminated measures of strain and temperature in metallic specimen with embedded superimposed long and short fibre Bragg Gratings

International audienceWe propose a superimposed fibre Bragg gratings device to measure, localize and discriminate strain and temperature effects simultaneously for structural health monitoring purpose. Long period grating (LPG) and fibre Bragg grating (FBG) exhibit different responses to an applied solicitation, thus, strain and temperature influences can be determined separately by measuring the corresponding wavelength shifts. In this paper we present a configuration based on the use of these two gratings types: a LPG and a FBG written in the same fibre section which allows us to discriminate the contributions of these two main solicitations. The sensor is calibrated in a temperature range from 22°C to 120°C, and in a strain range from 0 to 1400 µε. The reported errors are estimated to be within ± 0.4°C and ±5µε respectively. Our sensor is compared to the ones suggested in literature for the discrimination between strain and temperature with Bragg gratings. We propose a parameter E which allows to compare the relative uncoupling efficiency of those techniques. These sensors were embedded and tested in metallic material plates for a validation purpose of structural health monitoring