Strain Transfer Characteristic of a Fiber Bragg Grating Sensor Bonded to the Surface of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer Laminates

Abstract

Structural health monitoring is of great importance for the application of composites in aircrafts. Fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors are very suitable for structure strain measurement. However, the strain measured by FBG sensors is different from the original strain in host materials. The relationship between them is defined as strain transfer. As composites are anisotropic, the traditional strain transfer model, which regards the elasticity modulus of host materials as a constant, is inadaptable. In this paper, a new strain transfer model is proposed for FBG sensors bonded to the surface of carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) laminates. Based on the measurement structure, the model is established and the transfer function is derived. The characteristics influencing the strain transfer are analyzed. The stacking directions, stacking numbers, and stacking sequences of CFRP laminates have a distinct effect on the transfer efficiency, which is different from the isotropy host materials. The accuracy of the proposed model was verified by experiments on a nondestructive tensile system, and the maximum model error is less than 0.5%. Moreover, the model was applied to the strain measurement of CFRP wing skin, which indicates that measurement errors decrease by 11.6% to 19.8% after the compensation according to the model.