Sensors 2010, 10(11), 10198-10210; https://doi.org/10.3390/s101110198
Plastic Optical Fiber Displacement Sensor Based on Dual Cycling Bending
1
Department of Mechanical and Electro-Mechanical Engineering, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, 80424, Taiwan
2
Department of Vehicle Engineering, National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, Pingtung, 91201, Taiwan
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 28 September 2010 / Revised: 9 November 2010 / Accepted: 10 November 2010 / Published: 15 November 2010
(This article belongs to the Section Physical Sensors)
Abstract
In this study, a high sensitivity and easy fabricated plastic optical fiber (POF) displacement sensor is proposed. A POF specimen subjected to dual cyclic bending is used to improve the sensitivity of the POF displacement sensor. The effects of interval between rollers, relative displacement and number of rollers on the sensitivity of the displacement sensor are analyzed both experimentally and numerically. A good agreement between the experimental measurements and numerical calculations is obtained. The results show that the interval between rollers affects sensitivity most significantly than the other design parameters. Based on the experimental data, a linear equation is derived to estimate the relationship between the power loss and the relative displacement. The difference between the estimated results and the experimental results is found to be less than 8%. The results also show that the proposed POF displacement sensor based on dual cyclic bending can be used to detect displacement accurately. View Full-Text
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