Fiber optic smart monitoring of railway structure

Abstract

For monitoring of railway structures, optical fiber sensors are very convenient. The fiber sensors are very small and do not disturb the structural properties. They also have several merits such as electro-magnetic immunity, long signal transmission, good accuracy and multiplicity of one sensor line. Strain measurement technologies with fiber optic sensors have been investigated as a part of smart structure. In this paper, we investigated the possibilities of fiber optic sensor application to the monitoring of railway structures. We expect that the fiber optic sensors have much less noises than electrical strain gauges because of electro-magnetic immunity while railways operate electric power of 22000 volts. Fiber optic sensors showed good durability and long term stability for continuous monitoring of the railway structures as well as good response to the structural behaviors during construction.