Fiber Bragg grating sensor application for composite fast patrol boat

Glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) materials are recently widely applied in marine industry, especially for hulls structures. The high popularity of composites and safety requirements result in development of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems. One of the sensors types that can be permanently integrated with a composite structure and used as a part of SHM system are fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors. FBG sensors advantages like small size, high corrosion resistance, and absence of electric current are especially important in marine applications. The goal of the paper is to present FBG sensors application to SHM of a composite fast patrol boat. An array of the sensors was embedded into a boat hull structure. Moreover, accelerometer was utilized to determined maximum accelerations during the power boat operations. The analyses were performed during normal exploitation of the boat performed on the Gulf of Gdansk (southeastern bay of the Baltic Sea) under different sea states and wind speeds.