Development of a Bi-axial accelerometer based on intensity modulated plastic optical fiber for wind turbine monitoring

Abstract

The paper proposed an intensity modulated bi-axial accelerometer made from plastic optical fiber. The comparing to traditional piezo-electric accelerometer, the proposed design is light-weight, low-cost and immune to electromagnetic interference. The bi-axial acceleration was measured by light intensity coupling between a cantilever fiber and two receiving fibers. With pre-calibration, the two light intensity output are used to compute x and y components of a 2D acceleration. The frequency response test showed stable performance of the accelerometer up to 80 Hz, which is sufficient for the purpose of wind turbine monitoring.