Open Access

Technical textiles with embedded distributed fiber optic sensors have been developed for the purposes of structural health monitoring in geotechnical and civil engineering. The distributed fiber optic sensors are based on Brillouin scattering in silica optical fibers and OTDR in polymer optical fibers. Such 'smart' technical textiles are used for reinforcement of geotechnical and masonry structures. The embedded fiber optic sensors provide online information about the condition of the structure and about the occurrence and location of any damage or degradation.

The ever more ambitious strategic goals of meeting the requirements in ensuring technical safety and security of civil structures have resulted in flourishing development of innovative structural health monitoring (SHM) technologies for early damage diagnosis and prognosis. At the same time, implementing SHM systems provides tangible economic benefits derived from lower life-cycle costs associated with reduction in the maintenance, repair and insurance expenses. Due to the large size and harsh environmental conditions common to most civil structures, the broad range of favorable physical-mechanical properties of POFs allow for customized monitoring solutions for a wide variety of applications. In addition to common SHM-related advantages of optical fibers including their electromagnetic immunity, small size, lightweight as well as spark-free and non-conductive characteristics, POFs offer better bending and fracture resistance then their glass-counterparts. Particularly, the improved robustness of POFs, their ease of handling, low Young’s Modulus and high elastic limit of 10% compared to 1% in silica glass [1] are relevant to practical applications. Depending on the composition, dopants, drawing process and geometry [2], strain measurement up to 45% [3] or even above 100% [4,5] has been demonstrated with standard POFs. Therefore, the dominant market expected for POF sensors includes monitoring of high-strain-rate deformations in earthwork structures, crack detection in concrete and masonry structures [6] or overstressing in high-rise steel structures exposed to moisture, corrosion, leakage, fatigue, vibration, fire, overflow, earthquake and intentional damage. For fracture monitoring within concrete structures, the sensory usage of POFs becomes especially favorable since the extremely alkaline environment of concrete mixtures is well known to be corrosive to standard silica glass optical fibers (GOFs) [1,7]. Most of advanced distributed sensing techniques are commonly based on Rayleigh backscatter reflectometry using commercially available multimode (MM) POFs. Such typical MM POFs range from a step-index (SI) poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) POF having a core diameter of 1 mm to a low-loss graded-index (GI) perfluorinated (PF) POF based on poly(perfluorobutenyl-vinylether) also known as CYTOP [8] with a 50 µm core diameter. The relatively low optical attenuation value of 30 dB/km at 1.3 µm [9,10] makes PFGI POFs also interesting for distributed Brillouin sensing [11-14]. Compared to GOFs, PFGI POFs offer better potential for temperature measurement and have comparably low theoretical attenuation limit [15]. Therefore, POF-based distributed Brillouin sensing is expected to play an important role in the future of SHM, especially at high-strain ranges. The significance of the Brillouin measurment technique can be also enhanced by further development of the single-mode (SM) POFs which are still subject of research and are used for coherent detection techniques [6]. Furthermore, SM PMMA POFs have been characterized in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer setup for strain values up to 15.8% [16,17]. The current development of SM perfluorinated and microstructured POFs (mPOFs) represents an immense promise for quasi-distributed dynamic measurement at high strain levels based on fiber Bragg grating (FBG) technology. While SM mPOFs with optical losses of about 1 dB/m can be fabricated [6], the SM PF POFs presented by Zhou et al. feature low attenuation of even less than 0.2 dB/m in the wavelength range of 1.41 µm to 1.55 µm [18]. At the same time, the SM PF POFs have the potential for improved thermal stability compared to their PMMA counterparts [19]. This whole chapter provides a comprehensive overview on current POF-based sensing principles and SHM technologies, highlighting their diverse applications in civil engineering structures. In the application-related context, close attention is paid to the development of smart sensor-based geotextiles and geogrids. Such geosynthetics-integrated distributed POF sensors have proven to be a promising solution for two- or even tree-dimensional monitoring of critical high mechanical deformations in both geotechnical and masonry structures. Moreover, geosynthetics in the form of nonwoven geotextiles as well as polymer-based geogrids used as carrier materials for POF sensors enable optimized load transfer from the monitored structure to the measuring fiber without losing their original functionality. In other words, smart geosynthetics provide a cost-efficient dual solution for, on the one hand, well-established increase of structure stability and decrease of erosion effects, on the other hand, early-warning and detection capabilities in the prevention and elimination of potential hazards and lasting damages.

We report on the development of a field-proven distributed fiber optic sensing system for structural health monitoring in road construction and civil engineering. The system is based on a cost-efficient digital incoherent optical frequency domain reflectometry (I-OFDR) for distributed strain detection along a polymer optical fiber. In this method, the strain-induced backscatter increase in a graded-index multimode perfluorinated polymer optical fiber (PF-POF) is determined by measuring the complex transfer function of the sensing fiber using a compact digital data acquisition unit.

In this work, we present our results achieved in several research activities for development of fiber optic dosimeters. The findings show that both the measurement of the radiation-induced attenuation (RIA) along the entire sensing fiber and the accom panying change in the refractive index of the fiber core can be used for distributed radiation monitoring in the kGy and MGy range, respectively. Depending on the fiber type and material the RIA shows varying response to dose rates, environmental temperatures and the wavelength of the laser source used.

Health monitoring of ground movement via highly sensitive fiber optic sensors allows operators to detect early potential or ongoing failures in critical geotechnical structures. Particularly, the fiber optic sensors can be embedded in geosynthetics which are nowadays widely used in many geotechnical applications including earth dikes, railway embankments, landfill liners, quarries and mines. Thereby, such smart geosynthetics can be used for reinforcement, layer separation, filtration or drainage while the embedded fiber optic sensors provide information about the condition of the geotechnical structures in real time. The paper highlights the results achieved in this innovative field in the framework of several German and European projects. The presented measurement methods for long-term monitoring are based on Brillouin scattering in silica glass optical fibers (GOFs) and optical time domain reflectometry (OTDR) in polymer optical fibers (POFs).