Structural Instability-Enabled Mechanical Sensors Using Fiber Bragg Grating

Structural health monitoring (SHM) has been extensively used in civil infrastructures to assess structural condition and situation. Here, we develop a novel type of mechanical sensing technique using the structural instability of cylindrical cells detected by fiber Bragg grating (FBG). The cylinders are fabricated using a 3D printing technique, which are coiled by the FBG wires to detect the transverse deformation. Structural instability under axial compression is obtained in the experiments and the force–displacement relations are validated by the numerical simulations with satisfactory agreements. The wavelength variation of the FBG, caused by the structural instability, is observed and compared with the predefined threshold. Defining the variation larger than the threshold as “1” and smaller as “0”, the pattern recognition algorithm is used to convert the FBG results into binary data, which can, therefore, be analyzed to indicate the structural conditions. In the end, we envision the potential applications of the reported sensing technique, such as wireless sensors for structural health monitoring (SHM) in civil infrastructures.