An intensity based fiber accelerometer

The paper presents a low cost, compact, fiber optic sensor for measuring acceleration in environmentally harsh industrial applications. The sensor is based on the deformation of a cantilever measured through the variation of the propagation loss of a plastic optical fiber fixed on its surface. In order to enhance the sensitivity to bending, the fiber surface has been modified with grooves extending to part of the core. Preliminary experimental results have confirmed the feasibility of the proposed approach and the possibility to use the sensor both as an accelerometer and as a seismometer.