Development of low cost packaged fibre optic sensors for use in reinforced concrete structures

There is an ongoing need to measure strains in reinforced concrete structures more reliably and under a range of circumstances e.g. long term durability (such as effects of cracking and reinforcement corrosion), response to normal working loads and response under abnormal load conditions. Fibre optic sensors have considerable potential for this purpose and have the additional advantages, including of immunity to electromagnetic interference and light weight (Grattan et al., 2000). This is important in railway scenarios and particularly so when the lines are electrified. Their small size allows for easy installation. However, their use as commercial ‘packaged’ devices (traditionally seen as necessary to achieve adequate robustness) is limited by their high cost relative to other sensor devices such as encapsulated electric resistance strain gauges. This paper describes preliminary work to produce a cost-effective and easy-to-use technique for encapsulating fibre optic sensors in resin using 3D printing techniques to produce a robust, inexpensive ‘packaged’ sensor system suitable for use with concrete structures. The work done to date has shown this to be a convenient and economical way of producing multiple sensors which were suitable for both surface mounting and embedment in reinforced concrete structures. The proof-of-concept testing to which the trial packages were subjected is described in the paper and the results indicate that 3D printed packages have considerable potential for further development and use in a variety of civil engineering applications, competing well with more conventional sensor systems

Flow measurement inside a zinc-nickel flow cell battery using FBG based sensor system

Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only. A detailed knowledge of the internal flow distribution inside a zinc-nickel flow battery is of critical importance to ensure smooth flow of the electrolyte through the battery cell and better operation of the device. Information of this type can be used as a useful means of early detection of zinc deposition and dendrite formation inside the cell, negative factors which affect the flow and thus which can lead to internal short circuiting, this being a primary failure mode of these types of batteries. This deposition occurs at low pH levels when zinc reacts with the electrolyte to form solid zinc oxide hydroxides. Traditionally, manual inspection is conducted, but this is time consuming and costly, only providing what are often inaccurate results-overall it is an impractical solution especially with the wider use of batteries in the very near future. Fibre Bragg grating (FBG) sensors integrated inside the flow cell offer the advantage of measuring flow changes at multiple locations using a single fibre and that then can be used as an indicator of the correlation between the internal flow distribution and the deposition characteristics. This work presents an initial study, where two networks of FBGs have been installed and used for flow change detection in an active zinc-nickel flow battery. Data have been obtained from the sensor networks and information of battery performance completed and summarized in this paper. The approach shows promising results and thus scope for the future research into the development of this type of sensor system

Performance of the WaveBurst algorithm on LIGO data

In this paper we describe the performance of the WaveBurst algorithm which was designed for detection of gravitational wave bursts in interferometric data. The performance of the algorithm was evaluated on the test data set collected during the second LIGO Scientific run. We have measured the false alarm rate of the algorithm as a function of the threshold and estimated its detection efficiency for simulated burst waveforms.Comment: proceedings of GWDAW, 2003 conference, 13 pages, 6 figure

Active Turbulence and Scalar Transport near the Forest–Atmosphere Interface

Turbulent velocity, temperature, water vapor concentration, and other scalars were measured at the canopyatmosphere interface of a 13-14-m-tall uniform pine forest and a 33-m-tall nounuiform hardwood forest. These measurement were used to investigate whether the mixing layer (ML) analogy of Raupach et al. predicts eddy sizes and now characteristics responsible for much of the turbulent stresses and vertical scalar fluxes. For this purpose, wavelet spectra and cospectra were derived and analyzed. It was found that the MI. analogy predicts well vertical velocity variances and integral timescales. However, at low wavenumbers, inactive eddy motion signatures were present in horizontol velocity wavelet spectra, suggesting that MI. may not be suitable for scaling horizontal velocity perturbations. Momentum and scalar wavelet cospectra of turbulent stresses and scalar fluxes demonstrated that active eddy motion, which was shown by Raupach et al. to be the main energy contributor to vertical velocity (w) spectral energy (Em). is also the main scalar flux-transporting eddy motion. Predictions using ML of the peak E, frequency are in excellent agreement with measured waveled cospectral peaks of vertical fluxes (Kh = 1.5, where K is wavenumber and h is canopy height). Using Lorentz wavelet thresholding of vertical velocity time series, wavelet coefficients associated with active turbulence were identified. It was demonstrated that detection frequency of organized structures, as predicted from Lorentz wavelet filtering, relate to the arrival frequency /h and integral timescale, where is the mean horizontal velocity at height z = h. The newly proposed wavelet thresholding approach, which relies on a"global" wavelet threshold formulation for the energy in w, provides simultaneous energy-covariance-preserving characterization of "active" turbulence at the canopy-atmosphere interface

One Year of Alendronate Treatment Lowers Microstructural Stresses Associated with Trabecular Microdamage Initiation

Alendronate, an anti-remodeling agent, is commonly used to treat patients suffering from osteoporosis by increasing bone mineral density. Though fracture risk is lowered, an increase in microdamage accumulation has been documented in patients receiving alendronate, leading to questions about the potentially detrimental effects of remodeling suppression on the local tissue (material) properties. In this study, trabecular bone cores from the distal femur of beagle dogs treated for one year with alendronate, at doses scaled by weight to approximate osteoporotic and Paget's disease treatment doses in humans, were subjected to uniaxial compression to induce microdamage. Tissue level von Mises stresses were computed for alendronate-treated and non-treated controls using finite element analysis and correlated to microdamage morphology. Using a modified version of the Moore and Gibson classification for damage morphology, we determined that the von Mises stress for trabeculae exhibiting severe and linear microcrack patterns was decreased by approximately 25% in samples treated with alendronate compared with non-treated controls (p<0.01), whereas there was no reduction in the von Mises stress state for diffuse microdamage formation. Furthermore, an examination of the architectural and structural characteristics of damaged trabeculae demonstrated that severely damaged trabeculae were thinner, more aligned with the loading axis, and less mineralized than undamaged trabeculae in alendronate-treated samples (p<0.01). Similar relationships with damage morphology were found only with trabecular orientation in vehicle-treated control dogs. These results indicate that changes in bone's architecture and matrix properties associated with one year of alendronate administration reduce trabecular bone's ability to resist the formation of loading-induced severe and linear microcracks, both of which dissipate less energy prior to fracture than does diffuse damage

Wavelet-based 3-D Multifractal Spectrum with Applications in Breast MRI Images

Abstract. Breast cancer is the second leading cause of death in women in the United States. Breast Magnetic Resonance Imaging (BMRI) is an emerging tool in breast cancer diagnostics and research, and it is becoming routine in clinical practice. Recently, the American Cancer Society (ACS) recommended that women at very high risk of developing breast cancer have annual BMRI exams, in addition to annual mammograms, to increase the likelihood of early detection. (Saslow et al. [17]). Many medical images demonstrate a certain degree of self-similarity over a range of scales. The multifractal spectrum (MFS) summarizes possibly variable degrees of scaling in one dimensional signals and has been widely used in fractal analysis. In this work, we develop a generalization of MFS to three dimensions and use dynamics of the scaling as discriminatory descriptors for the classification of BMRI images to benign and malignant. Methodology we propose was tested using breast MRI images for four anonymous subjects (two cancer, and two cancer-free cases). The dataset consists of BMRI scans obtained on a 1.5T GE Signa MR (with VIBRANT) scanner at Emory University. We demonstrate that meaningful descriptors show potential for classifying inference

Bayesian Wavelet Shrinkage of the Haar-Fisz Transformed Wavelet Periodogram.

It is increasingly being realised that many real world time series are not stationary and exhibit evolving second-order autocovariance or spectral structure. This article introduces a Bayesian approach for modelling the evolving wavelet spectrum of a locally stationary wavelet time series. Our new method works by combining the advantages of a Haar-Fisz transformed spectrum with a simple, but powerful, Bayesian wavelet shrinkage method. Our new method produces excellent and stable spectral estimates and this is demonstrated via simulated data and on differenced infant electrocardiogram data. A major additional benefit of the Bayesian paradigm is that we obtain rigorous and useful credible intervals of the evolving spectral structure. We show how the Bayesian credible intervals provide extra insight into the infant electrocardiogram data

Coherent method for detection of gravitational wave bursts

We describe a coherent network algorithm for detection and reconstruction of gravitational wave bursts. The algorithm works for two and more arbitrarily aligned detectors and can be used for both all-sky and triggered burst searches. We describe the main components of the algorithm, including the time-frequency analysis in wavelet domain, construction of the likelihood time-frequency maps, the identification and selection of burst events.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, proceedings of Amaldi conference in Sydney, Australi

A Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG)-Based Sensor System for Anaerobic Biodigester Humidity Monitoring

An operational, Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG)-based sensing system, specifically designed to monitor conditions in a harsh industrial environment is reported. The sensors used were placed inside tanks with high levels of methane (CH 4 ), carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and hydrogen sulphide (H 2 S) gases and high relative humidity in the North Head sewage treatment plant in Sydney, Australia. The sensor system was developed primarily to monitor the effect of >98% relative humidity and temperature changes on the corrosion rates of various materials inside the tanks. Data have been obtained from the use of the system for eight months: these have been correlated with key climate data including the changing weather conditions experienced during the continued monitoring activity. The sensor system specifically developed has been shown to be sufficiently robust to work well, and safely, in such a harsh environment (due to the gaseous H 2 S and CH 4 present) with no signs of deterioration of the sensors or of the signals obtained from the system. The remote operation through flexible data transmission has allowed continuous and up-to-date monitoring of the conditions inside the tanks

Extended study of fiber optic-based humidity sensing system performance for sewer network condition monitoring

This paper reports on an extended (20-month) period of monitoring of humidity in situ at two locations in the sewer network operated by Sydney Water using a fibre optic network into which a series of Bragg Grating-based sensors had been installed. The locations (Eustace Street in Manly, Sydney and Old Toongabbie at Oakes Reserve, western Sydney, Australia) both had different operating environments and thus conditions for evaluating the sensor system. It was designed to provide a solution to enable long term, low cost and more reliable monitoring in the harsh conditions of the sewer environments in terms of high relative humidity &#x003E; 95% and a broad range of hydrogen sulfide levels. The results of the study show that even after &#x007E;20 months of use, the same sensor is reliably recording humidity and temperature in the sewer environment &#x2013; overcoming the problems seen with conventional electrical sensors, which typically fail within a couple of weeks of use in this continuous high acid/high humidity environment. The data, recorded constantly from the sensor system, were stable throughout the full monitoring period and further, a comparison with the changing weather conditions was made over the different seasons during the study. The sensor system developed was battery operated and had 4G connectivity for data transfer and debugging. These features have enabled the system to be installed in situations where power is not available and operate successfully with minimal human operation, thus allowing for additional systems to be integrated to the measurement system in the future