Fiber Optic Sensors Are Wired for Growth with Infrastructure Improvements

“On a 30-km pipeline – about the length of the one that just leaked in California – at 1-m resolution, you’d have 30,000 ‘microphones’ sensing ship traffic,” said Kent Wardley, [2021] chairman of the Fiber Optic Sensing Association and vice president of sales for the Americas at Fotech. Distributed acoustic sensing is one way that fiber optic sensing systems are now being used to monitor infrastructure and detect unexpected activity in challenging environments….In addition to acoustic sensing, fiber optic sensors can also monitor temperature, strain, pressure, vibration, and the relative concentration of gases and chemicals….“it may take a few more really catastrophic accidents for continuous monitoring systems to become mandated in the U.S.” He referenced the Amtrak train derailment in rural Montana…last year, in which three people died….“If fiber was on that track,” Wardley said, “they would have detected a bad bearing or a flat wheel or a split rail prior to the derailment ever happening.”
Fiber Optic Sensors Are Wired for Growth with Infrastructure Improvements
Photonics Spectra January 2022
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