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Responding to a growing need for intelligent monitoring of critical geotechnical and civil infrastructures, new multifunctional geotextiles and geogrids with integrated optical fibers were developed and investigated within several research projects. Such smart two-dimensional geosynthetics intercorporating optical fibers as distributed sensors provide solutions both for soil reinforcement, erosion control, drainage or environmental protection and for cost-effective monitoring of critical mechanical deformations and temperature distribution in geotechnical and masonry structures at the same time. The integrated fiber optic sensors provide online information about the condition of the monitored structure and about the occurrence and localization of any damage or degradation for the purpose of preventing a total collapse.
Responding to a growing need for intelligent monitoring of critical geotechnical and civil infrastructures, new multifunctional geotextiles and geogrids with integrated optical fibers were developed and investigated within several research projects. Such smart two-dimensional geosynthetics intercorporating optical fibers as distributed sensors provide solutions both for soil reinforcement, erosion control, drainage or environmental protection and for cost-effective monitoring of critical mechanical deformations and temperature distribution in geotechnical and masonry structures at the same time. The integrated fiber optic sensors provide online information about the condition of the monitored structure and about the occurrence and localization of any damage or degradation for the purpose of preventing a total collapse. The optical fibers have a serious advantage over other kinds of sensors due to their fibrous nature, so they can be ideally processed like standard textile yarns.
The monitoring of extended geotechnical structures like dikes, dams, railways, embankments or slopes requires sensor technologies with measurement lengths of at least some hundred meters which can be realized by the use of silica fibers. However, the integration of silica fibers into geosynthetics during the manufacturing process experienced problems of sensor brittleness, low strain range not exceeding 2 % and bending-related attenuation increase optimized to the value of 1.5 dB/km. Unlike silica fibers, the integration of polymer optical fibers (POFs) into various geosynthetics was easily achieved free of bending losses enabling distributed high strain measurements up to 40 % using PMMA POFs. The first industrial product GEDISE based on a geogrid with integrated PMMA POFs is on the market.
Due to the five times lower attenuation of low-loss perfluorinated graded-index POFs (PFGI-POFs), compared to PMMA POFs, the measurement range can be extended to 500 m. The low-loss PFGI-POFs offer the possibility of implementation of Brillouin optical fiber frequency domain analysis (BOFDA) which will significantly improve the measurement accuracy and spatial resolution in comparison with existing POF-based distributed measurement methods like POF OTDR. The development of a distributed Brillouin system based on PFGI-POFs is in progress.
We report on the development of a complete system for spatially resolved detection of critical soil displacement in river embankments. The system uses Brillouin frequency domain analysis (BOFDA) for distributed measurement of strain in silica optical fibers. Our development consists of the measurement unit, an adequate coating for the optical fibers and a technique to integrate the coated optical fibers into geotextiles as they are commonly used in dike construction. We present several laboratory and field tests that prove the capability of the system to detect areas of soil displacement as small as 2 meters. These are the first tests of truly distributed strain measurements on optical fibers embedded into geosynthetics.