Influence of Temperature on Additive Manufacturing Polymer Structure with Embedded Fibre Bragg Grating Sensors

Abstract

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a common name for a group of techniques that are applied for constructing three-dimensional objects in a layer-by-layer process. The main advantages of such methods are variety of materials (polymers, metals, ceramics) and possibility of manufacturing elements with complex shapes. Therefore, such techniques have been already adopted for rapid prototyping results in shortening delay between design concept and final product. One of the AM methods is multi-jet printing, which offers high accuracy of printed polymeric elements, that can be applied in many industrial branches, e.g. energetic. Safety requirements related to exploitation of structures results in development of structural health monitoring (SHM) methods based on fibre optic sensors. One of the sensor types are fibre Bragg grating (FBG) sensors. Their advantages (small dimensions, multiplexing capabilities) allow them to be embedded into AM structure during manufacturing process. The goal of the paper is to analyse temperature influence on FBG sensors embedded into an AM polymeric material. The analyses will be concerned on both spectrum reflected from the sensor and strain determined using on Bragg wavelength change.