Optical fiber macro-bend seismic sensor for real-time vibration monitoring in harsh industrial environment

Condition monitoring of electromechanical equipment for heavy industry places special requirements on the environmental sensors' construction. Widely available electronic devices can easily suffer from the electromagnetic interference or may pose fire hazard. An important category of dedicated sensing devices emerged during the expansion of fiber optic technology in the last few decades. In this paper, contributing in the basic research in the field, a novel kind of intrinsic intensity fiber optic vibration sensor is proposed. We present a fiber loop based opto-mechanical transducer utilized in two configurations: the inertial sensor system working as accelerometer and a distributed vibration sensor. The complete mathematical model for the latter type configuration has been introduced, as well as some results of preliminary experimental tests on both sensor concepts have been presented.