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Recently, many studies have been exerted on developing ultrasonic transducers that can feature high frequencies for better resolutions and compact sizes for the limit space nondestructive testing applications. Conventional ultrasonic transducers, which are made by piezoelectric materials, suffer from issues such as low frequencies and bulky sizes due to the difficulty of dicing piezoelectric materials into smaller pieces. On the other hand, generating ultrasonic signals by photoacoustic principle is a promising way to generate a high frequency ultrasonic pulse. Optical fiber is a very compact material that can carry the light energy. By combining the photoacoustic principle and the optical fiber together, a novel ultrasonic transducer that features a high frequency and a compact size could be achieved. In this paper, an ultrasonic transducer using gold nanoparticles as the photoacoustic generation material is described. Gold nanoparticles are deposited on the end surface of an optical fiber acting as the ultrasonic generator. A cavity and a diaphragm are fabricated in the center of the fiber using as the ultrasonic receiver. A phase array technique is applied to the transducer to steer the direction of the acoustic beam. Simulation results demonstrated that the photoacoustic ultrasonic transducer is feasible.

This paper presents a miniature fiber optic temperature sensor and its application in concrete structural health monitoring. The temperature sensor is based on Fabry-Perot (FP) principle. The endface of the fiber was wet etched. A piece of borosilicate glass was thermally deposited into the cavity on the etched endface to form an FP cavity. Temperature calibration experiments were performed. A sensor with 30 m microcavity length was demonstrated to have a sensitivity of 0.006 nm/°C and linearity coefficient of 0.99. During the early-age of concreting, the sensor was embedded in the concrete structure to monitor the temperature change caused by the exothermic chemical reaction between the cement and water. The dramatically increased temperature inside the structure was directly related to its future structural health. During the concrete hydration experiment, the measured peak temperature of concrete specimens was 59.7 °C 12.5 hour after concrete casting.

The adaptive neural network is a standard technique used in nonlinear system estimation and learning applications for dynamic models. In this paper, we introduced an adaptive sensor fusion algorithm for a helmet structure health monitoring system. The helmet structure health monitoring system is used to study the effects of ballistic/blast events on the helmet and human skull. Installed inside the helmet system, there is an optical fiber pressure sensors array. After implementing the adaptive estimation algorithm into helmet system, a dynamic model for the sensor array has been developed. The dynamic response characteristics of the sensor network are estimated from the pressure data by applying an adaptive control algorithm using artificial neural network. With the estimated parameters and position data from the dynamic model, the pressure distribution of the whole helmet can be calculated following the Bazier Surface interpolation method. The distribution pattern inside the helmet will be very helpful for improving helmet design to provide better protection to soldiers from head injuries.

An optical fiber biosensor featuring miniaturization, electromagnetic interference (EMI)-immunity, and flexibility is presented. The sensor was fabricated by aligning two gold-deposited optical single-mode fiber facets inside V-grooves on a silicon chip to form a Fabry-Perot (FP) cavity. The mirrors on the fiber facets were made of deposited gold (Au) films, which provided a high finesse to produce a highly sensitivity. Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) fabrication techniques were used to precisely control the profile and angle of the V-grooves on the silicon. The biotin-terminated thiol molecule was firstly immobilized on the gold surface. Subsequently, the molecules of Neutravidin were specifically bound to the biotin-terminated self-assembled monolayers (SAMs). The induced changes of cavity length and refractive index (RI) upon the gold surface lead to an optical path difference (OPD) of the FP cavity, which was detected by demodulating the transmission spectrum phase shift. By taking advantage of MEMS techniques, multiple biosensors can be integrated into one small silicon chip for detecting various biomolecule targets simultaneously.