Abstract
Measurement of blade strain with sensors directly installed on the blade has one critical issue, how to send the sensor signal to the ground. Strain-gauges have been dominantly used to directly measure stress of a blade and either a slip ring or a telemetry system has to be used to send measured signal to the ground. However, both systems have many inherent problems and sometimes very severe limitations to be practically used. In this paper, new on-line strain monitoring method using. FBG(Fiber Bragg Grating) sensors and a beam coupler is introduced. Measurement of rotor stress using FBG sensors is nothing new, but unlike other system which installs all necessary instruments on the rotor and use telemetry system to send data to the ground, this system makes use of light's unique characteristic - light travels through space. In this new approach, single optical fiber with many FBG sensors is installed on the blade and all other necessary instruments can be installed at ground thereby giving tremendous advantages over slip ring or telemetry system. A reference sensor is also introduced to compensate the beam coupler's transmission loss change due to rotation. The suggested system's good performance is demonstrated with experiments.
