Performance evaluation of fiber Bragg grating sensors by digital holographic technique, strain gauge measurement

In view of the growing interest for non-destructive tests of materials, geodynamical monitoring and in general remote sensing, there is a great effort to bring practical optical sensors from research labs to industrial and environmental applications. In this paper, we employ digital holographic technique as an efficient tool for evaluating the strain measurement capability of fiber Bragg gratings (FBG). A cantilever beam has been employed as a test structure under loading test. The strain measurements results obtained by fiber-based sensors have been compared to those obtained by using full-field digital holographic technique and point-wise strain gauge sensors glued on the same cantilever beam. A simple theoretical model is also presented to interpret and compare the experimental results coming from different techniques.