A novel periodic macrobending hetero-core fiber optic sensor embedded in textiles

This paper presents the design of a novel periodic macrobending hetero-core fiber optic sensor embedded in textiles. In order to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed sensor, experiments were done on a macrobending sensor constructed from 62.5-50-62.5 hetero-core fiber and a macrobending sensor constructed from 62.5/125 μm multi-mode fiber having different loops. Experimental results show that the sensitivity of the proposed macrobending sensor constructed using hetero-core optical fiber is much higher than the sensor constructed from plain multi-mode optical fiber. It is also shown that, the sensitivity of the sensor increases as the number of loops is increased. In addition, the forward and reverse loading effects of the designed sensor exhibit a very close behavior indicating the reversibility of the fiber optic sensor.