800 IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 12, NO. 4, APRIL A Robust and Compact Fiber Bragg Grating Vibration Sensor for Seismic Measurement Yinyan Weng, Xueguang Qiao, Tuan Guo, Member, IEEE, Manli Hu, Zhongyao Feng, Ruohui Wang, and Jing Zhang Abstract—A compact fiber Bragg grating (FBG) vibration sensor consisting a flat diaphragm and two L-shaped rigid cantilever beams for seismic measurement has been proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The specially designed sensing configuration contributes many desirable features such as a wide frequency response range (10–120 Hz), an extremely high sensitivity coefficient ( 100 pm g) together with a robust metal package for improving the mechanical strength and a decreased transverse sensitivity ( 5%), making it a good candidate for in-field seismic wave measurement in oil and gas exploration. Index Terms—Cantilever beam, fiber Bragg grating (FBG), vibration sensor. I. INTRODUCTION N THE OIL AND GAS exploration industry, the increasing demand for seismic wave measurement excites the research on vibration measurement techniques. Various kinds of vibration sensors have been proposed, including the piezoelectric, piezoresistive, capacitive, fiber-optic-based techniques [1]–[3]. Among these techniques, FBG (FBG) shows a great potentials in vibration measurement because of its distinguished advantages such as immunity to EMI and RFI, multiplexing ability, small size and lightweight, and much high sensitivity [4], [5]. Based on the in-field experiences [2], for the seismic measurement of oil and gas exploration, the required vibration frequency for detection is usually range from 10 to 100 Hz. Metal-cantilever-beam-based FBG vibration sensor, with special configuration design, can meet above frequency I Manuscript received July 18, 2011; accepted August 17, 2011. Date of publication August 30, 2011; date of current version February 08, 2012. This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation under Grant 60727004 and Grant 61077060, in part by the National High Technology Research and Development Program 863 Foundation under Grant 2007AA03Z413 and Grant 06Z203, in part by the Ministry of Education Project of Major Science and Technology Innovation Foundation under Grant Z08119, in part by the Ministry of Science and Technology Project of International Cooperation Foundation under Grant 2008CR1063, in part by the Shaanxi Province Project of Science and Technology Innovation Foundation under Grant 2009ZKC01-19 and Grant 2008ZDGC-14, in part by the Guangdong Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant S2011010001631, and in part by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China under Grant 11611601. The associate editor coordinating the review of this paper and approving it for publication was Prof. Ozanyan Krikor. Y. Weng, X. Qiao, M. Hu, Z. Feng, R. Wang, and J. Zhang are with the Department of Physics, Northwest University, Xi’an 710069, China (e-mail: wyyandlym@163.com; xgqiao@nwu.edu.cn; huml@nwu.edu.cn; fengzhongyao@nwu.edu.cn; wrhnwu@gmail.com; nwuphy@126.com). T. Guo is with the Institute of Photonics Technology, Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, China (e-mail: tuanguo@jnu.edu.cn). Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSEN.2011.2166258 range detection requirement. For example, a two-parallel- rectangular-beam-based FBG accelerometer was reported in 1998 [6], which provided a wide bandwidth about 100 Hz and a good cross-sensitivity of less than 1%. However, its acceleration ). A FBG vibration sensor sensitivity is much low (31.5 using a double-cantilever beam structure was proposed in 2009 [7]. It showed a narrow frequency resonance range from 0.1 to 15 Hz and a high sensitivity 189 mv/g, with the maximal cross-axis anti-interference about 33 dB. Designing sensors with better quality and lower cost encourages further research in this field. In this paper, we report the design and performance of a FBG accelerometer composing of a flat diaphragm and a U-shaped rigid cantilever beam. The U-shaped rigid cantilever beam is used to enhance the vibration effect and the flat diaphragm is to minimize the cross-axis sensitivity. Experimental results demonstrate that this FBG accelerometer provides a high senand an extended frequency response sitivity up to ranging from 10 to 120 Hz, covering the key frequencies to be measured for civil engineering structural monitoring and seismic measurements. Meanwhile, the cross-sensitivity is for an excellent immunity to cross-axis depressed to signals. II. PRINCIPLE OF SENSORS DESIGN The schematic structure of the U-shaped rigid cantilever beam based FBG vibration sensor is shown in Fig. 1. Two L-shaped rigid cantilever beams were made as two L-shaped levers which were supported by two bars and can be flexibly rotated around the precision bearing. The U-shaped lever is made up of two L-shaped levers through the hinge. The diaphragm was clamped by two locking pillars either side. A FBG was glued between points A and B on left and right levers, respectively. It is worth to note that the FBG was two-point-fixed (instead of entirely pasting along the whole grating section to avoid the potential grating chirp) and it is prestrained in order to make sure a real-time response to external vibration signal. The brass mass consists of three parts function as a connection between level and diaphragm. The above and bottom masses were made for bolt and lock nut, respectively, and the middle mass was used as counter weight. According to elastics [8], the deflection of the diaphragm (center point) caused by the inertial force of mass is given by 1530-437X/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE (1) WENG et al.: A ROBUST AND COMPACT FIBER BRAGG GRATING VIBRATION SENSOR FOR SEISMIC MEASUREMENT 801 Fig. 1. Structural schematic of the vibration sensor. and the deflection of the diaphragm (center point) caused by the reaction force resulting from the force of FBG is given by TABLE I THE PARAMETER OF THIS ACCELEROMETER (2) So, the actual deflection of the center of diaphragm can be expressed as (3) According to geometric knowledge, the relationship between strain and deflection can be expressed as (4) So, strain can be described as (5) Therefore, sensitivity coefficient expression can be represented by the (6) According to the equation of motion of the structure, natural frequency can be expressed as Fig. 2. Experimental setup of the accelerometer. III. EXPERIMENT AND DISCUSSION (7) In the above formulas, is the total mass of brass, and are the elastic modulus and cross-section area of fiber, and is the distance between points A and B, respectively. and is Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio of diaphragm, and is radius and thickness of diaphragm, and is the length of is the short arm and long arm of L-shaped lever, respectively. numerical coefficient depending on radius and contact radius of the diaphragm, is the bending rigidity of diaphragm, and is the spring stiffness of FBG and diaphragm, respectively. The parameters of the FBG vibration sensor are listed in Table I. We can figure out that this sensor provides a natand sensitivity coefficient ural frequency in theory. A series of experiments were carried out to verify the sensing properties of accelerometer. Fig. 2 shows the experimental setup of the accelerometer. A standard piezoelectric acceleration sensor (type BK8305) is attached above the accelerometer for calibration. In the experiment, a small precision shaking table (type JZ-40 produced by Beijing Spectrum) provides a serious of sine excitations with tunable frequency as the input signal and the output of fiber grating sensor is monitored by wavelength interrogator (type SM-130 produced by American Micron Optics) with the resolution of 1 pm and sampling frequency of 1000 Hz. We ignored the influence of temperature to FBG because it is really a slow change fluctuation ( minutes) comparing to that of vibration change ( microseconds). To minimize the potential thermal-induced geometrical structure nonuniformity between the two beams either side, the whole 802 Fig. 3. Frequency response characteristic of the accelerometer (Y axis is the ratio between the measured amplitude response and the imposed acceleration). IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 12, NO. 4, APRIL Fig. 4. Linear response of peak-to-peak wavelength shift versus acceleration. metal beam ( left and right) is fabricated by one moulding (not a configuration combined with several separated sections) and the supporting point is accurately positioned in the beam center to avoid any unwanted nonaxial alignment. Experimental results showed that the output error caused by the temperature fluctuations (between 20 C and 50 C) is less than 5%, which identified the proposed sensing configuration is stable enough for the most in-field applications. However, for the high temperature C under-well vibration measurement or seismic monitor, further investigation and tests should be carried out to improve its feasibility. A. Frequency Response Frequency response range of the accelerometer is one of the key characters as it dominates the possible applications the sensor to be employed. In this experiment, the input signal frequency was increased from 10 to 400 Hz with the same exciting amplitude at 0.5 g, which is calibrated by a commercial piezoelectric acceleration sensor. We used the dynamic demodulator to obtain the accelerometer output of each frequency (with a frequency step of 10 Hz) and detect the maximum wavelength shift correspondingly. The amplitude-frequency characteristic of the accelerometer is shown in Fig. 3. The figure identifies a flat response range (effective frequency measurement range) is from 10 to 120 Hz (with a resonant frequency about 170 Hz), covering the key frequencies to be measured in seismic wave exploration. The experimental value of resonant frequency is lower than theoretical prediction is mainly because of the nonvertical assembly between U-shaped lever and mass. B. Sensitivity Coefficient In this experiment, the acceleration amplitude of sine excitation varied from 1 to 20 with a constant frequency at 30 and 80 Hz, respectively. The peak-to-peak wavelength shift was recorded by the dynamic demodulator. Fig. 4 shows a linear response between peak-to-peak wavelength shift and acceleration amplitude for the vibration frequency of 30 and 80 Hz, with the sensitivity coefficient of 98.06 pm/g (30 Hz) and 102.24 pm/g (80 Hz), respectively. Although the expected sensitivity curve under the beam’s natural resonance frequency (170 Hz) should be flat. However, the measured sensitivity coefficients are slight Fig. 5. Input waveform of PE accelerometer. different (e.g., the 30 and 80 Hz, as shown in the Fig. 4) with a slight increasing trend (but less than 5% totally). Meanwhile, the detected sensitivity coefficient is higher than that of theoretical calculation in the above section, this is due to we simplify the L-shaped beam configuration in theoretical model and the elastic modulus referenced may not be exactly correct. C. Contrast to PE Accelerometer During the experiment, the standard piezoelectric (PE) accelerometer was used to record the input signal of actuator and make a contrast to FBG sensor output. Figs. 5 and 6 show the input waveform of standard PE accelerometer and the output waveform of FBG accelerometer, respectively, under a sinusoidal driving signal at 50 Hz and acceleration of 1 g. Figs. 7 and 8 are frequency spectra of standard PE accelerometer and FBG accelerometer which are Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) of Figs. 5 and 6, respectively. The discrepancy of frequency response between them is less than 1%. Moreover, the output waveform is almost a sinusoidal curve, demonstrating that FBG is without chirp. D. Cross-Axis Sensitivity To ensure one-dimension vibration measurement, a low cross-axis sensitivity is essentially important. Here, in our experiment, the sine vibration input with 0.5 g acceleration is induced to the FBG sensor in main-axial direction and WENG et al.: A ROBUST AND COMPACT FIBER BRAGG GRATING VIBRATION SENSOR FOR SEISMIC MEASUREMENT 803 Fig. 6. Output waveform of FBG accelerometer. Fig. 9. Cross-axis anti-interference characteristic. 3.33% of the main-axis). It identifies that the proposed sensing configuration performs good vibration direction discrimination ability. IV. CONCLUSION Fig. 7. Frequency spectrum of PE accelerometer. The feasibility of U-shaped rigid cantilever beam based FBG vibration sensor for seismic measurement has been demonstrated. The U-shaped rigid cantilever beam is used to enhance the vibration effect and the flat diaphragm is to minimize cross-axis sensitivity. Experimental tests, calibrated with commercial PE accelerometer, show that the proposed sensing device provides the excellent performance, including a wide frequency response range (0–120 Hz), a high sensitivity , together with the good cross-axis coefficient anti-interference degree and robust metal package, making it a good candidate for in-field seismic wave monitoring system in oil and gas exploration. REFERENCES Fig. 8. Frequency spectrum of FBG accelerometer. cross-axial direction, respectively, over the frequency range from 20 to 160 Hz. The experimental results are shown in Fig. 9. The output wavelength shift of main-axis is of 30 pm, whereas it is only about 1 pm in that of cross-axis (equal to [1] J. M. Lopez-Higuera, M. A. Morante, and A. Cobo, “Simple low-frequency optical fiber accelerometer with large rotating machine monitoring applications,” J. Lightw. Technol., vol. 15, pp. 1120–1130, Jul. 1997. [2] J. Wu, V. Masek, and M. Cada, “The possible use of fiber Bragg grating based accelerometers for seismic measurements,” in Proc. Electr. Comput. Eng. Conf., 2009, pp. 860–863. [3] P. Antunes, H. Varum, and P. Andre, “Uniaxial fiber Bragg grating accelerometer system with temperature and cross axis insensitivity,” Measurement, vol. 44, pp. 55–59, Sep. 2011. [4] S. J. Spammer and P. L. Fuhr, “Temperature insensitive fiber optic accelerometer using a chirped Bragg grating,” Opt. Eng., vol. 39, pp. 2177–2181, Aug. 2000. [5] A. Laudati, F. Mennella, M. Giordano, G. D’Altrui, C. C. Tassini, and A. Cusano, “A fiber-optic Bragg grating seismic sensor,” IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 19, pp. 1991–1993, Dec. 2007. [6] M. D. Todd, G. A. Johnson, B. A. Althouse, and S. T. Vohra, “Flexural beam-based fiber Bragg grating accelerometers,” IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 10, pp. 1605–1607, Nov. 1998. [7] N. Qiuming and Z. Chengming, “Study on FBG vibration sensor,” in Proc. Photon. Optoelectron. Conf., 2009, pp. 1–4. [8] T. M. Stephen, Theory of Plates and Shells. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959, pp. 51–75. 804 IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 12, NO. 4, APRIL Yinyan Weng received the B.Sc. degree in physics from Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China, in 2009. Currently, she is working towards the M.Sc. degree in optics at Northwest University, Xi’an, China. Her current research interests are centered on the field of geophone, fiber-optic sensors. Xueguang Qiao received the B.Sc. degree in physics from Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China, in 1982, and the Ph.D. degree in optics from Xi’an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics of CAS, Xi’an, China, in 1998. From 1999 to 2000, he was at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, as a Visiting Scholar. Currently, he is a Professor of Physics at Northwest University, Xi’an, China. He is coauthor of over 160 publications in journals and conference proceedings and is co-inventor on seven invention patents. His research work mainly focus on photonics technology, fiber communication and sensing, fiber logging in oil and gas fields, geophysical prospecting, and oil and gas pipeline inspection. Tuan Guo (M’09) received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electronics engineering from Xi’an Shiyou University, Xi’an, China, in 2001 and 2004, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in optics from Nankai University, Tianjin, China, in 2007. From 2007 to 2008, he was with the Department of Electronics, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada, as a Postdoctoral Fellow working on tilted fiber grating sensors and surface plasmon fiber sensors. Since August 2008, he joined the Photonics Research Centre at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China, as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow working on speciality fiber sensors and fiber laser sensors. Currently, he is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Photonics Technology, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China. His research work mainly focuses on photonic components and devices, fiber-optic sensors, fiber lasers, and bio-photonics. He is coauthor of over 80 publications in journals and conference proceedings and is co-inventor on three patents. Dr. Guo is a member of the Optical Society of America (OSA). He is the Associate Editor of the IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL. Manli Hu received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in optics from Northwest University, Xi’an, China, in 1983 and 1993, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in optics from Xi’an Institute of Optics Precision Mechanics of CAS, Xi’an, China, in 1999. From 2003 to 2004, he was at Kobe University, Japan, as a Visiting Scholar. Currently, he is a Professor of Physics at Northwest University, Xi’an, China. He is coauthor of over 90 publications in journals and conference proceedings. His research work mainly focuses on information photonics, fiber sensor, and photoelectric inspection technology. Zhongyao Feng received the B.Sc. degree and Ph.D. degree in optics from Northwest University, Xi’an, China, in 1997 and 2008, respectively. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Physics at Northwest University. He is coauthor of over 20 publications in journals and conference proceedings. His research work mainly focuses on information photonics and optic fiber sensing technology. Ruohui Wang received the B.S. degree in optics from Northwest University, Xi’an, China, in 2008. Currently, he is working towards the Ph.D. degree in optics at Northwest University. His research interests are mainly in optical fiber sensing technology. Jing Zhang received the B.S. degree in physics from Northwest University, Xi’an, China, in 2009. Currently, he is working towards the M.Sc. degree in optics at Northwest University. His research interests focus on fiber sensors and fiber lasers.
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