Optical Fiber Serpentine Arrangements for Vibration Analysis Using Distributed Acoustic Sensing

Distributed acoustic sensors (DASs) are able to monitor in real-time acoustic excitation and mechanical vibration of the external environment for many kilometers along the length of the optical fiber. In the oil industry, the technology allows the monitoring of well structural health, identifying flow profile, acquiring seismic data, updating reservoir information, and feeding geological models. The spatial resolution of DAS is a limiting factor on the quality of information gathered. In this article, we propose and analyze a novel method of measuring local dynamic strain of structures using DAS. The method uses serpentine configurations to measure the frequency spectrum of the in-phase strain signals at discrete regions of the structure, enabling DAS to determine, among other vibration parameters, the strain frequency response function (SFRF). An experimental study of the sensor application with different arrangements in a small structure has been performed. The structure in the experiment consists of a free–free aluminum beam of approximately 2.7 m. Experiment results show agreement with numerical results developed by the finite element method (FEM) and using reference sensors, demonstrating a significant improvement of the DAS SFRF accuracy using the serpentine configuration and up to 12.9 dB increase in peak-to-noise ratio (PNR) for low excitation forces. The recovered response enabled the reconstruction of mode shapes.