Conference paper
Fuel level sensor based on polymer optical fiber Bragg gratings for aircraft applications
Aston University1
Polytechnic University of Valencia2
Fibers & Nonlinear Optics, Department of Photonics Engineering, Technical University of Denmark3
Department of Photonics Engineering, Technical University of Denmark4
Fiber Sensors & Supercontinuum, Department of Photonics Engineering, Technical University of Denmark5
Department of Informatics and Mathematical Modeling, Technical University of Denmark6
Safety in civil aviation is increasingly important due to the increase in flight routes and their more challenging nature. Like other important systems in aircraft, fuel level monitoring is always a technical challenge. The most frequently used level sensors in aircraft fuel systems are based on capacitive, ultrasonic and electric techniques, however they suffer from intrinsic safety concerns in explosive environments combined with issues relating to reliability and maintainability.
In the last few years, optical fiber liquid level sensors (OFLLSs) have been reported to be safe and reliable and present many advantages for aircraft fuel measurement. Different OFLLSs have been developed, such as the pressure type, float type, optical radar type, TIR type and side-leaking type. Amongst these, many types of OFLLSs based on fiber gratings have been demonstrated.
However, these sensors have not been commercialized because they exhibit some drawbacks: low sensitivity, limited range, long-term instability, or limited resolution. In addition, any sensors that involve direct interaction of the optical field with the fuel (either by launching light into the fuel tank or via the evanescent field of a fiber-guided mode) must be able to cope with the potential build up of contamination – often bacterial – on the optical surface.
In this paper, a fuel level sensor based on microstructured polymer optical fiber Bragg gratings (mPOFBGs), including poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) and TOPAS fibers, embedded in diaphragms is investigated in detail. The mPOFBGs are embedded in two different types of diaphragms and their performance is investigated with aviation fuel for the first time, in contrast to our previous works, where water was used.
Our new system exhibits a high performance when compared with other previously published in the literature, making it a potentially useful tool for aircraft fuel monitoring.
Language: | English |
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Publisher: | SPIE - International Society for Optical Engineering |
Year: | 2016 |
Pages: | 98860W-98860W-8 |
Proceedings: | Micro-Structured and Specialty Optical Fibres IV |
Series: | Proceedings of Spie - the International Society for Optical Engineering |
ISBN: | 1510601317 and 9781510601314 |
ISSN: | 1996756x and 0277786x |
Types: | Conference paper |
DOI: | 10.1117/12.2225918 |
ORCIDs: | Bang, Ole |
Aerospace instrumentation and equipment Bragg gratings Fibre optic sensors Fibre optic sensors; fibre gyros Gratings, echelles Level, flow and volume measurement OFLLS Optical materials Optical polymers and other organic optical materials Other fibre optical devices and techniques PMMA fibers Spatial variables measurement TIR type TOPAS fibers aircraft aircraft fuel measurement aircraft fuel monitoring aircraft fuel systems aviation fuel capacitive techniques civil aviation contamination diaphragms electric techniques evanescent field explosive environments fiber-guided mode fibre optic sensors flight routes float type fuel fuel level monitoring fuel level sensor fuel systems fuel tank level measurement limited resolution long-term instability mPOFBG maintainability microstructured polymer optical fiber Bragg gratings optical fiber liquid level sensors optical field optical polymers optical radar optical radar type optical surface poly(methyl methacrylate) pressure type reliability side-leaking type ultrasonic techniques water