Assistant Professor Yosuke Mizuno and Professor Kentaro Nakamura of the Institute of Future Industrial Technology, Tokyo Institute of Technology, along with Dr. Yasushi Hayashi, Fanac Co., Ltd., and Korea Central University, distributed optical fiber that can detect deformation (elongation) and temperature in optical fiber. We worked to improve the performance of the sensor and succeeded for the first time in the world in achieving both light incident from one end and real-time operation.
In recent years, aging deterioration of social infrastructure constructed during the period of high economic growth and measures against natural disasters such as earthquakes have emerged as major social problems.As a countermeasure, a method of embedding an optical fiber in a building, tunnel, bridge, etc. and injecting light from both sides to monitor the deformation of the structure is being used, but it takes time to lay a sensor and even one place on the way. There was a problem that the operation stopped when it broke.
Therefore, the research team has developed a distributed optical fiber sensor that can receive light from one end and measure speed more than 2 times that of the conventional method, based on the phase detection technology that detects how much the two sine waves are in time. ..It has made it possible to measure elongation and temperature at a specific position up to 5,000 times per second.We also demonstrated real-time operation by tracking the propagation of deflection deformation.
This system expands the range of applications as disaster prevention and crisis management technology related to various structures such as buildings, bridges, tunnels, dams, embankments, pipelines, wind turbine blades, aircraft wings, etc., and improves the safety of life. Contribute.Furthermore, by wrapping it around an arm, it is expected to be applied as a new "nerve" for robots that detect contact, deformation, and temperature changes at arbitrary positions.
