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Distributed Fiber-Optic Pressure Sensor Based On Bourdon Tubes Metered By Optical Frequency-Domain Reflectometry, Chen Zhu, Yiyang Zhuang, Yizhen Chen, Rex E. Gerald Ii, Jie Huang

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

We report a distributed fiber-optic pressure sensor based on Bourdon tubes using Rayleigh backscattering metered by optical frequency-domain reflectometry (OFDR). In the proposed sensor, a piece of single-mode fiber (SMF) is attached to the concave surfaces of Bourdon tubes using a thin layer of epoxy. The strain profiles along the concave surface of the Bourdon tube vary with applied pressure, and the strain variations are transferred to the attached SMF through the epoxy layer, resulting in spectral shifts in the local Rayleigh backscattering signals. By monitoring the local spectral shifts of the OFDR system, the pressure applied to the Bourdon …