Novel FBG rosette for determining impact location in thin plate-like structure

Abstract

The paper consists of two interdependent parts. The first part presents numerical simulations of output response of single Fibre Bragg Grating (FBG) sensor which is driven by homogeneous deformation along sensor length. The example of such sensor is FBG sensor glued at only two points. The grating length and modulation depth of the refractive index are the critical parameters contributing to performance of the FBG sensors. Numerical analysis allowed to select an appropriate FBG sensors which will be used in the impact detection problem. In the second part of the paper a novel strain rosette with specific sensor array used in impact localisation problem is discussed and presented. The experiment was carried out on thin composite plate with the use of pulse force excitation. The method is based on estimation of principal direction of perturbed travelling wave initiated at impact point and does not use any information about wave propagation velocity.