Design and test of a novel accelerometer made-up of an optical-fiber embedded within a polymer resin

Abstract

This paper presents a transducer for an optical-fiber accelerometer based on a polarization analysis. The transducer is made up of a fiber section embedded within a resin placed between two metallic pieces. Due to the acceleration, the resin is crushed between the metallic pieces, deforming the fiber section and inducing birefringence in the latter. This birefringence modifies the light polarization state, which can be used as an acceleration measurement. The sensor characteristics (sensitivity and resonance frequency) are numerically and experimentally determined. Sine accelerations at 120 Hz with amplitudes going from 5 m/s2 to 13 m/s2 have been successfully measured. The resonance frequency for the transducer crushing mode is above 5000 Hz, but low-frequency vibration modes exist, disturbing the measurements.