Distributed Brillouin fiber optic strain monitoring applications in advanced composite materials

Composite materials based on glass, carbon and aramid fibers have many advantages such as fast application, lightweight and corrosion resistance, and are widely diffused for manufacturing of tanks.. pipings and for restoration, upgrade and seismic retrofit of structures and historical heritage. As several questions regarding long term durability of composite strengthenings remains still unsolved, monitoring of strain and temperature is strongly recommended, respectively to assess proper load transfer and no glass phase transition of the polymeric matrix. In this research work strain and temperature distributed sensing trough Brillouin scattering in single-mode optical fibers was used in different tests in order to understand the influence of different fiber coatings and embedding techniques. Pressure tests were performed on a GFRP piping with inhomogeneous strengthening layout and Brillouin strain data were compared with conventional strain gages. A smart CFRP material has been also developed and evaluated in a seismic retrofit application on an historical building dated 1500 that was seriously damaged in the earthquake of 1997. The developed embedding technique has been demonstrated successful to obtain fiber-optic smart composites with low optical losses, and the data comparison between Brillouin and resistive strain gauges confirms Brillouin technique is very effective for composite monitoring.