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In the last decades, considerable attention has been paid to the development of polymer optical fibers (POFs) that may, in certain cases, represent more suitable or cost effective alternative to their glass based counterparts. Due to some of their unique properties, POFs have found their applications in the area of data transmission, lighting as well as optical sensing. Compared to the glass based fiber sensors, POFs are more robust and flexible yielding sensors suitable also for larger strain applications. They have better biocompatibility and are generally more acceptable for medical applications. In addition, POFs can provide higher inherent sensitivity to some of the more alternative measurands such as humidity or ionizing radiation.
Over the last three years, BAM’s Division 8.6 has been participating in the European FP7 project “TRIPOD” devoted to the development of POF technology for sensing applications. Project activities and main technological achievements will be reviewed. Special attention will be paid to the utilization of optical fiber sensors in radiation environments. In the recent years, ionizing radiation has found numerous applications also outside the nuclear industry, e.g. in material processing, sterilization or medical applications. With increasing importance of radiation processes, demand for suitable monitoring techniques is rising as well. Among available dosimetry solutions, optical fiber based dosimeters offer numerous advantages such as electromagnetic immunity, small dimensions and possibility of remote and real time monitoring. A concept of attenuation based radiation sensing with perfluorinated POFs will be investigated and presented as a potential candidate for low cost easy to use on line radiation monitoring system.
Fibreoptic sensors (FOS) represent sensing technology with small footprint, low invasiveness, electromagnetic passivity and immunity, plus potential for remote and real-time monitoring. Modern FOS techniques allow truly temporally- and spatially-continuous monitoring over extended distances; a feature not attainable with any other sensing technology. Moreover, depending on their particular material composition and design, optical fibres can be made resistant to high temperatures, chemicals and ionizing radiation. Due to this unique combination of advantageous properties, ever since their emergence, FOS have been attracting considerable attention for monitoring tasks in harsh, hazardous and difficult-to-access locations. The potential of FOS has been recognized also in the field of radioactive waste management and fibreoptic sensors belong to the most promising technologies for nuclear waste repositories (NWR) monitoring.
Vast majority of distributed fibreoptic sensor applications rely on use of silica-based optical fibres as sensing elements. At the same time, distributed measurement of local temperature and strain along the fibre are the most common monitoring tasks addressed by fibreoptic sensors. Nevertheless, FOS offer much larger flexibility both in terms of utilized sensing fibre as well as targeted measurand. In this contribution, we will review some of more alternative implementations of FOS that are being explored at “Fibre Optic Sensors” division of Federal Institute for Material Research and Testing (BAM), in Berlin. The main focus will be twofold. On one side, we will address FOS applications with polymer optical fibres (POF), that may enable monitoring of large strains (>100%) and high-sensitivity radiation detection. On the other side, we will present our activities in the area of distributed acoustic sensing (DAS); one of the most recent developments in the fibreoptic sensing field enabling highly-dynamic vibration sensing with nanostrain sensitivity. We will introduce the principles of the addressed FOS technologies, present application examples from our case studies, discuss advantages and limitations of the techniques and highlight their potential for NWR monitoring.