Flexural beam-based fiber Bragg grating accelerometers

A flexural beam is utilized as the primary transduction mechanism for demonstrating a series of fiber Bragg grating (FBG) accelerometers. The fully packaged FBG accelerometers reported in this work have many desirable features including good acceleration sensitivity (212.5 mu epsilon/g), high resonant frequencies (on the order of 1 kHz), very low cross-axis sensitivity (< 1% of the primary axial responsivity), and low noise (similar to 1 mg/root Hz near 1 Hz). Arrays of such devices can be utilized in a variety of applications, including structural monitoring. Closed-form analytical formulas describing the resonant frequency and responsivity of the FBG accelerometer are provided which may be utilized to tailor the sensor performance to specific applications.