Feasibility of Packaged Interferometric Photonics Micro-Taper Sensor for Cold-Formed Steel Roof Truss Structural Health Monitoring

The paper presents the feasibility of a packaged interferometric photonics micro-taper sensor to be used for accurate measurement of curvature on cold-formed steel (CFS) roof truss structural monitoring. The interferometric photonics micro-taper sensor is protected within a polypropylene package to survive in harsh, in-the-field conditions. After installing both the interferometric photonics micro-taper sensor and linear variable displacement transducers (LVDTs) on a CFS roof truss, fatigue tests were conducted on the truss and the curvature is characterized. The accuracy of curvature measurement results is further verified by obtaining correlation coefficient of 0.9973 which shows excellence agreement between LVDT and interferometric photonics micro-taper sensor measurement. Furthermore, the sensor is highly sensitive to curvature which is -0.0372 μW/km
^-1
for the curvature range of 1.880 km
^-1
to 3.324 km
^-1
.