Real-Time Temperature Monitoring under Thermal Cycling Loading with Optical Fiber Sensor

Abstract

A fiber optic sensing system consisting of a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor, optical circulator, optical band pass filter and photodetector is developed to monitor the real-time temperature response of a structure under a dynamic thermal loading. The FBG sensor is surface-bonded on a test specimen and integrated with an optical band pass filter. As a broadband light source transmits into a FBG sensor, a specific wavelength is reflected and transmitted into an optical band pass filter. The reflected wavelength is significantly affected by the temperature, while the output light power from the optical band pass filter is dependent on the wavelength. By measuring the light power with a photodetector, the wavelength can be demodulated, resulting in the determination of the temperature. In this work, the proposed optical sensing system was utilized to monitor the dynamic temperature change of a steel beam under a thermal cycling loading. To verify the accuracy of the fiber optic sensor, a thermocouple was adopted as the reference. The experimental results illustrate a good agreement between the fiber optic sensor and thermocouple. Electronic packages composed of various components such as a solder joint, silicon die, mold compound, and solder mask are frequently subjected to a thermal cycling loading in real-life applications. Temperature variations’ incorporation with mismatches of coefficients of thermal expansion among the assembly components leads to crack growth, damage accumulation and final failure. It is important to monitor the temperature to prevent a thermal fatigue failure. A fast response and easy implementation of the fiber optic sensing system was proposed for the real-time temperature measurement under thermal cycling loading.