Proceedings Article | 20 April 2016
Proc. SPIE. 9803, Sensors and Smart Structures Technologies for Civil, Mechanical, and Aerospace Systems 2016
KEYWORDS: Optical fibers, Optical sensing, Polymethylmethacrylate, Silica, Fiber optics, Sensors, Signal attenuation, Polymers, Glasses, Optical coatings, Corrosion, Nondestructive evaluation, Fiber optics sensors, Structural health monitoring, Aluminum, Smart structures, Geometrical optics, Micro optical fluidics
Corrosion is a multi-billion dollar problem faced by industry. The ability to monitor the hidden metallic structure of an aircraft for corrosion could result in greater availability of existing aircraft fleets. Silica exposed-core microstructured optical fiber sensors are inherently suited towards this application, as they are extremely lightweight, robust, and suitable both for distributed measurements and for embedding in otherwise inaccessible corrosion-prone areas. By functionalizing the fiber with chemosensors sensitive to corrosion by-products, we demonstrate in-situ kinetic measurements of accelerated corrosion in simulated aluminum aircraft joints.