Study on the spectral response of fiber Bragg grating sensor under non-uniform strain distribution in structural health monitoring

Many theoretical studies have been developed to study the spectral response of a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) under non-uniform strain distribution along the length of FBG in recent years. However, almost no experiments were designed to obtain the evolution of the spectrum when a FBG is subjected to non-uniform strain. In this paper, the spectral responses of a FBG under non-uniform strain distributions are given and a numerical simulation based on the Runge-Kutta method is introduced to investigate the responses of the FBG under some typical non-uniform transverse strain fields, including both linear strain gradient and quadratic strain field. Experiment is carried out by using loads applied at different locations near the FBG. Good agreements between experimental results and numerical simulations are obtained.