Study of a Long-Gauge FBG Strain Sensor with Enhanced Sensitivity and Its Application in Structural Monitoring

A long-gauge fiber Bragg grating (FBG) strain sensor with enhanced strain sensitivity is proposed, which is encapsulated with two T-shaped metal blocks. Its fabrication method is described briefly, and the strain sensitivity can be flexibly adjusted through changing its packaging method. A series of experiments are carried out to study the packaging and its sensing properties. The experimental results show that the strain and temperature sensitivity coefficient of the sensor are three times larger than the common FBG sensors. The linearity coefficients of the FBG sensor are larger than 0.999, and the relative error of the repeatability of all sensor samples is less than 1%. Through the stability test on the actual bridge, it is revealed that the long-term stability of the sensor is excellent, and the maximum error is less than 1.5%. In addition, the proposed FBG strain sensors are used to conduct a shear strengthening experiment on a reinforced concrete (RC) beam to verify its working performance. The experimental results show that the strain change and crack propagation of the RC beam are well monitored by the sensors during the loading process.