Creating a Self-Measuring Smart Structure with a Fully Distributed Strain Rosette

With the integration of new materials into applications and structures, developing strain profiles to characterize material behavior, conduct structural health monitoring and enable in-situ non-destructive testing requires a different measurement solution.

High-Definition Fiber Optic Sensors (HD-FOS) have been frequently utilized for highly spatially-resolved strain measurements on a wide variety of materials and complex part geometries.

Luna has demonstrated that a single fiber can be configured into a rosette geometry, allowing planar and shear strains to be fully characterized. By arranging a single fiber optic sensor in an extended rosette pattern, distributed principal strains and their orientations can be determined at any location within the pattern.

This research focused on integrating fiber optic sensors into composite structures and culminated with embedding a distributed rosette pattern into a composite helicopter rotor blade. The rotor blade was shown to be effective in measuring distributed strains on the order of ±500 microstrain along its curved surfaces, resulting in a highly desirable smart structure capable of measuring its own mechanical integrity.

Learn more in the "Fully Distributed Strain Rosette Using High Definition Fiber Optic Sensing" session at the SAMPE 2019 Conference & Exhibition 10:30-10:55 a.m. May 22 in Room 208B of the Charlotte Convention Center.