Thin-silica-diaphragm-based fiber optic acoustic sensors

In this sensor, we demonstrate the developing and testing of fiber optic sensors intended to detect acoustic waves. The sensor is based on a novel design housing a thin silica diaphragm and a single mode fiber in an extrinsic Fabry- Perot interferometric structure. The designed sensor is tested for different applications including the detection of the partial discharges inside a power transformer. The test results indicate that the designed sensor can detect acoustic signals with high sensitivity at frequency as high as 200 kHz.