Additive manufacturing method application for manufacturing polymeric structure with embedded fiber Bragg grating sensor

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a common name for a group of techniques that are applied for constructing three-dimensional (3D) objects in a layer-by-layer process. One of the AM methods is multi-jet printing, which offers high accuracy of printed polymeric elements and the possibility of manufacturing products with complex shapes. Elements manufactured using AM are exploited in many industrial branches, e.g. energetic, medicine or aerospace. It results in development of structural health monitoring (SHM) systems. Among a variety of sensors applied for SHM systems fibre Bragg grating sensors (FBG) are a very promising solution. Their advantages, such as small size, multiplexing capabilities and no calibration requirements, allow them to be embedded into different material types. The goal of the paper is to analyze possibility of FBG sensors embedding into an AM polymeric material. The analyzes will be related to the influence of the manufacturing process on FBG sensors as well as influence of temperature on the sensors after finished embedding process.