Passive guided waves measurements using fiber Bragg gratings sensors

Guided elastic waves are often studied as an effective solution for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems of plate-like structures thanks to the capacity to propagate on large distances. In typical applications such as monitoring delaminations in aircraft fuselage, a network made of piezoelectric transducer (PZT) is used to emit and receive such waves in the structure. Fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors on optical fibers are a promising alternative to PZT for guided waves measurements in practical applications due to the capacity for dense multiplexing and robustness with respect to the environment. However, unlike conventional PZT transducers, FBG sensors cannot emit waves. It is demonstrated here that FBG sensors can be used in combination with a passive diffuse noise cross-correlation technique in order to extract the coherent guided waves propagating between two sensors. This could lead to a system using only FBG sensors in the near future. The reconstructed signals can then be analyzed with usual guided waves algorithms, like in active SHM systems, keeping all the advantages of this kind of monitoring in terms of fine diagnosis. The experimental demonstration shown in this paper is performed at ultrasonic frequencies (20–100 kHz) typically used in guided waves based SHM systems showing the potential of the approach.