• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.303-317
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• 2011

A specially designed tendon, which is proposed by embedding an FBG sensor into the center king cable of a 7-wire strand tendon, was applied to monitor the prestress force and load transfer of ground anchor. A series of tensile tests and a model pullout test were performed to verify the feasibility of the proposed smart tendon as a measuring sensor of tension force and load transfer along the tendon. The smart tendon has proven to be very effective for monitoring prestress force and load transfer by measuring the strain change of the tendon at the free part and the fixed part of ground anchor, respectively. Two 11.5 m long proto-type ground anchors were made simply by replacing a tendon with the proposed smart tendon and prestress forces of each anchor were monitored during the loading-unloading step using both FBG sensor embedded in the smart tendon and the conventional load cell. By comparing the prestress forces measured by the smart tendon and load cell, it was found that the prestress force monitored from the FBG sensor located at the free part is comparable to that measured from the conventional load cell. Furthermore, the load transfer of prestressing force at the tendon-grout interface was clearly measured from the FBGs distributed along the fixed part. From these pullout tests, the proposed smart tendon is not only expected to be an alternative monitoring tool for measuring prestress force from the introducing stage to the long-term period for health monitoring of the ground anchor but also can be used to improve design practice through determining the economic fixed length by practically measuring the load transfer depth.

• Journal of Advanced Navigation Technology
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.465-470
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• 2020

Complex materials are widely used in aviation industries where lightweighting is essential because they have lighter properties than metals. However, composite materials can cause defects such as internal void formation, poor adhesive mixing, and non-adhesive parts during the production process, and there is a risk of micro-cracking and interlayer separation due to low energy impact. Therefore, a structural damage test is essential. As a result, structural integrity monitoring using FBG is drawing attention. Compared to conventional electrical sensors, FBG has the advantage of being more corrosion-resistant and multiplexed without being affected by electrical noise. However, interloggers measuring FBG are expensive and have a large disadvantage because they are made on the premise of measuring large structures. In this paper, low-cost interloggers were designed for use in unmanned or small aircraft using optical switche, WDM filter, and LTFs, and compared to conventional high-priced interrogator.

• Composites Research
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2016

Low-speed impact was localized on a stiffened composite structure, using 4 FBG sensors with 100 kHz-sampling rate interrogator and devised localization algorithm. The composite specimen consists of a main spar and several stringers, and the overall size of the specimen's surface is about $0.8{\times}1.2m$. Pre-stored reference data for 247 grid locations and 36 stiffener locations are gathered and used as comparison target for a random impact signal. The proposed algorithm uses the normalized cross-correlation method to compare the similarities of the two signals; the correlation results for each sensor's signal are multiplied by others, enabling mutual compensation. 20 verification points were successfully localized with a maximum error of 43.4 mm and an average error of 17.0 mm. For the same experimental setup, the performance of the proposed method is evaluated by reducing the number of sensors. It is revealed that the mutual compensation between the sensors is most effective in the case of a two sensor combination. For the sensor combination of FBG #1 and #2, the maximum localization error was 42.5 mm, with average error of 17.4 mm.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.436-441
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• 2009

A fiber optic sensor is prospective to be applied to structural health monitoring. Especially, a fiber Bragg grating(FBG) sensor is one of the most popular sensors for the structural health monitoring. The FBG sensor has several demodulation systems for tracking the shift of the Bragg wavelength. The dynamic bandwidth is dependent on the demodulation system. In this paper, the sensing mechanism is that the slope of the optical spectrum of FBG could be used as its sensitivity when the tunable laser shot the monochromatic laser wavelength at the highest slope point. In this technique, the high sensitivity is guaranteed even though the sensing range is limited. In an example of the application, the composite plate embedding a FBG sensor was manufactured by using an autoclave method and the above sensing mechanism was applied to the composite plate. Firstly, the natural frequencies of the plate were successfully measured by the FBG sensor during the impact hammer test. Secondly, a high-power speaker was used to force the plate to be vibrated at the specific frequency that was one of the natural frequencies. During the shaking, the FBG sensor measures the dynamic characteristics and ESPI was also used to measure the mode shape. From the two dynamic tests, the availability of the FBG sensor system and the ESPI was proven as a technique for measuring the dynamic characteristics of composite structure.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.13-25
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• 2012

Ground anchor method is one of the most popular reinforcing technology for slope in Korea. For the health monitoring of slope which is reinforced by permanent anchor for a long period, monitoring of the tension force of ground anchor is very important. However, since electromechanical sensors such as strain gauge and V/W type load cell are also subject to long-term risk as well as suffering from noise during long distance transmission and immunity to electromagnetic interference (EMI), optical FBG sensors embedded tendon was developed to measure strain of 7-wire strand by embedding FBG sensor into the center king cable of 7-wire strand. This FBG sensors embedded tendon has been successfully applied to measuring the short-term anchor force. But to adopt this tendon to long-term monitoring, temperature compensation of the FBG sensors embedded tendon should be done. In this paper, we described how to compensate the effect in compliance with the change of underground temperature during long-term tension force monitoring of ground anchors by using optical fiber sensors (FBG: Fiber Bragg Grating). The model test was carried out to determine the temperature sensitivity coefficient (${\beta}^{\prime}$) of FBG sensors embedded tendon. The determined temperature sensitivity coefficient ${\beta}^{\prime}=2.0{\times}10^{-5}/^{\circ}C$ was verified by comparing the ground temperatures predicted from the proposed sensor using ${\beta}^{\prime}$ with ground temperatures measured from ground thermometer. Finally, temperature compensations were carried out based on ${\beta}^{\prime}$ value and ground temperature measurement from KMA for the tension force monitoring results of tension type and compression type anchors, which had been installed more than 1 year before at the test site. Temperature compensated tension forces are compared with those measured from conventional load cell during the same measuring time. Test results show that determined temperature sensitivity coefficient (${\beta}^{\prime}$) of FBG sensors embedded tendon is valid and proposed temperature compensation method is also appropriate from the fact that the temperature compensated tension forces are not dependent on the change of ground temperature and are consistent with the tension forces measured from the conventional load cell.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.41 no.11
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• pp.1135-1142
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• 2008

Collapse of the levee surrounding structure(culvert) accounts for l0 % of collapse factors of the river levees. In particular, in 2002, the levee collapse that happened at "Nakdong River" at flood usually happened around culverts. This levee collapse has mechanism that the cavity expands with internal erosion at flood after the pore and cavity are formed between culvert and levee copula which are heterogeneity material. The study regarding the cavity or flowing detection around a culvert for safety management of a river levee is in the proceeding. In this study, the characteristic of two sensors could be figured out through an experiment about displacement measure of Flex sensor and FBG sensor and the decision of more suitable sensor was possible for safety supervision of river levee. According to an experiment result, several characteristics of FBG sensor could be known in consistency of the measure data and minute displacement measure part regarding displacement measure and this characteristic may supplement a shortcoming of Flex sensor at this time.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.17-26
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• 2011

Ground anchor method is one of the most popular reinforcing technology in Korea. For the sound monitoring of slope reinforced by permanent anchor for a long period, monitoring the tension force of ground anchor is very important. However, special technology except conventional load cell has not been developed for this purpose. In this paper, a new method is described to replace the conventional strain gauge and V.W. type load cell which has been commonly used as a prestress force monitoring tool for a short-term and long-term. Four 11.5 m long strain detectable tension type anchors were made using FBG sensor embedded tendon since FBG sensor is smaller than strain gauge type load cell and does not have noise from electromagnetic wave. Each two set strain detectable tension type anchors were installed into the different ground conditions, i.e., soft rock and weathered granite soil. Prestress force of ground anchor was monitored during the loading-unloading step from in-situ pullout test using proposed FBG sensor embedded in the tendon and the conventional load cell Test results show that the prestress force monitored from FBG sensor may well be used practically, for it almost matches with that measured from expensive load cell.