title: Optical Fiber Sensors for Aircraft Structural Health Monitoring.
abstract: Aircraft structures require periodic and scheduled inspection and maintenance operations due to their special operating conditions and the principles of design employed to develop them. Therefore, structural health monitoring has a great potential to reduce the costs related to these operations. Optical fiber sensors applied to the monitoring of aircraft structures provide some advantages over traditional sensors. Several practical applications for structures and engines we have been working on are reported in this article. Fiber Bragg gratings have been analyzed in detail, because they have proved to constitute the most promising technology in this field, and two different alternatives for strain measurements are also described. With regard to engine condition evaluation, we present some results obtained with a reflected intensity-modulated optical fiber sensor for tip clearance and tip timing measurements in a turbine assembled in a wind tunnel.
authors.affiliation: Department of Communications Engineering, E.T.S.I. of Bilbao, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Alda. Urquijo s/n Bilbao 48013, Spain. iker.garciae@ehu.eus.
authors.forename: Iker
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: García
authors.affiliation: Department of Communications Engineering, E.T.S.I. of Bilbao, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Alda. Urquijo s/n Bilbao 48013, Spain. joseba.zubia@ehu.eus.
authors.forename: Joseba
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zubia
authors.affiliation: Department of Communications Engineering, E.T.S.I. of Bilbao, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Alda. Urquijo s/n Bilbao 48013, Spain. gaizka.durana@ehu.eus.
authors.forename: Gaizka
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Durana
authors.affiliation: Department of Communications Engineering, E.T.S.I. of Bilbao, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Alda. Urquijo s/n Bilbao 48013, Spain. gotzon.aldabaldetreku@ehu.eus.
authors.forename: Gotzon
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Aldabaldetreku
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Physics I, E.T.S.I. of Bilbao, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Alda. Urquijo s/n Bilbao 48013, Spain. ma.illarramendi@ehu.eus.
authors.forename: María Asunción
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Illarramendi
authors.affiliation: Department of Communications Engineering, E.T.S.I. of Bilbao, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Alda. Urquijo s/n Bilbao 48013, Spain. agustinjoel.villatoro@ehu.eus.|IKERBASQUE-Basque Foundation for Science, E-48011 Bilbao, Spain. agustinjoel.villatoro@ehu.eus.
authors.forename: Joel
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Villatoro
keywords: fiber Bragg grating; long period grating; optical fiber sensors; structural health monitoring; turbine condition monitoring