Fiber Optic Sensors for Transportation Infrastructural Health Monitoring

Problem statement: Monitoring the health of transportation infrastructures is currently reliant on transportation maintenance teams. Scheduled and periodic inspections on most of the infrastructures are performed by manual and visual operations, which are generally time consuming and costly procedures. The use of the fiber optic sensor technology makes it possible to realize continuous, real time and automatic health monitoring for the transportation infrastructure. Approach: This article provided a tutorial introduction to transportation infrastructural health monitoring using fiber optic sensors. Since the topic spans many disciplines, our goal was limited to providing a basic conceptual framework. We began by reviewing the prerequisite topics from structural health monitoring and fiber optic sensors, including a brief review of point and distributed fiber optic sensor technologies. We then provided a comprehensive review of key fiber optic sensors which may be used in the transportation infrastructure monitoring. Results: Point fiber optic sensors were first discussed and then distributed fiber optic sensors. Performances of each sensor are discussed based on the transportation infrastructure monitoring application. Conclusion: We concluded the tutorial with a number of observations on the current directions of the research field of the fiber optic sensor for the transportation infrastructure health monitoring.