Development of a low-cost bi-axial intensity-based optical fibre accelerometer for wind turbine blades

A bi-axial optical fibre accelerometer was developed for wind turbine monitoring. The sensor was fabricated from intensity-modulated optical fibre, which is low-cost, lightweight and simple in design. The bi-axial acceleration was measured by light intensity coupling between a cantilever fibre and two receiving fibres. Numerical simulation was performed to obtain the light coupling characteristics and the results were used to design the sensor parameters. A prototype was fabricated and the calibration scheme validated experimentally. The performance of the prototype was tested in terms of frequency response and linearity. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.