Optical fiber sensors for spacecraft applications

Optical fiber sensors offer a number of advantages for spacecraft applications. A principal application is strain sensing for structural health monitoring, shape determination, and spacecraft qualification testing. This paper will review the results of recent work at the Naval Research Laboratory where optical fiber strain sensors have been used on spacecraft structures and ground test hardware. The sensors have been both surface mounted to the structure and embedded in fiber-reinforced polymer composites. The issue of potential strength reduction of high-performance composites due to embedded optical fiber sensors and leads has been studied, low-cost fabrication of tubular struts with embedded sensors has been demonstrated, and a novel technique for fiber ingress–egress from composite parts has been developed. Applications of fiber sensors discussed in this paper include distributed dynamic strain monitoring of a honeycomb composite plate and a lightweight reflector during acoustic qualification tests, ultrahigh-sensitivity static strain and temperature measurements for precision structures, and on-line system identification of a lightweight laboratory truss. (Some figures in this article appear in colour in the electronic version; see www.iop.org)