Development of FBG-based road ice thickness monitoring sensor and its application on the traffic road

To real-time monitoring of the thickness of the ice layer on the road surface and enhance the safety of traffic operation, based on the fiber grating wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technology, this paper develops a kind of monitoring sensor for the thickness of the ice layer by pasting multiple fiber Bragg gratings (FBG) on one equal-strength beam, and constructs an experiment on the measurement of the thickness of ice layer to explore the sensor's validity. Finally, the developed sensor was installed on the sidewalk of one traffic road to monitor the ice layer thickness of the road in real time. The experimental and field test results show that the sensor can effectively measure the thickness of ice layer, and the measurement accuracy is related to the FBG spacing on the equal-strength beam in the sensor.