Nanoparticle- (NP-) doped optical fibres show the potential to increase the signal-to-noise ratio and thus the sensitivity of optical fibre strain detection for structural health monitoring. In this paper, our previous experimental/simulation study is extended to a design study for strain monitoring. 100 nm spherical gold NPs were randomly seeded in the optical fibre core to increase the intensity of backscattered light. Backscattered light spectra were obtained in different wavelength ranges around the infrared C-band and for different gauge lengths. Spectral shift values were obtained by cross-correlation of the spectra before and after strain change. The results showed that the strain accuracy has a positive correlation with the relative spectral sensitivity and that the strain precision decreases with increasing noise. Based on the simulated results, a formula for the sensitivity of the NP-doped optical fibre sensor was obtained using an aerospace case study to provide realistic strain values. An improved method is proposed to increase the accuracy of strain detection based on increasing the relative spectral sensitivity, and the results showed that the error was reduced by about 50%, but at the expense of a reduced strain measurement range and more sensitivity to noise. These results contribute to the better application of NP-doped optical fibres for strain monitoring.

The colour of the ground layers of a painting has an influence on its visual appearance. In addition to the commonly used white ground layers, other colour ground layers have been used, for example, the grey ground layer used in Peter Paul Rubens’s painting Portrait of Clara Serena Rubens helps the colour transition of the skin tones. Understanding the effects caused by the colours of the ground layers is of significance for both technical art history and conservation. Optical non-destructive testing (NDT) techniques are useful tools for the investigation of paintings, for example, optical coherence tomography (OCT) can be used to study the surface and subsurface layers non-destructively. In this work, the interaction of light with paint and ground layers is modelled to supplement OCT measurements of paintings with ground layers. A previously described near-infrared light range OCT system provides high spatial and depth resolution measurements. A four-flux model has been developed for analysing the light interaction in the paint and ground layers. This model considers forwards-propagating collimated light, backwards-propagating collimated light, forwards-propagating diffuse light and backwards-propagating diffuse light. The model uses the optical material properties, including refractive index (RI), absorption and layer thickness, as input. This paper describes the construction of the model and an evaluation of its performance by comparison with OCT data.

The plasmon resonance spectral peak of a gold spherical nanoparticle (NP) will shift when the NP shape is changed from sphere to spheroid. This may be used as a novel strain detection method with gold NPs embedded in a medium of different refractive index (RI). Applying a strain to the external medium will cause a change in the shape of the NP from spherical to spheroidal. In our previous work, it was found that when the RI change of the medium surrounding the NPs is close to zero, the shape change induced plasmon resonance spectral peak shift will become important. In order to obtain only the wavelength shift values caused by the shape change of the NPs, the RI of medium surrounding the gold NPs is set at a constant of 1.45 and the RI of the gold NP is assumed unchanged. The T-matrix method is used to calculate the scattered light and light extinction by the NP morphing. The diameters of the gold NPs are set from 100 nm to 400 nm, with the size interval at 10 nm, to cover a wide size range for typical sizes of gold spherical NPs. The spectra of the light scattering and light extinction were calculated on the Delft University high performance computing cluster. The results show that the plasmon resonance spectral peak shift is related to the size of the NPs. Larger sizes of gold NPs have larger peak shift values, but there is an inflection point around 200 nm and the bandwidth of the resonance peak becomes larger which will cause a difficulty in precisely locating the peak.

Strain-based structural health monitoring (SHM) relies on high performance strain sensing methods. Gold nanoparticle (NP) doped fibre optic sensors not only have the potential to increase the intensity of the backscattered signal to increase the signal to noise ratio but also have plasmon resonance peaks in the visible light range. The spectral peak shift of the plasmon resonance may be used for strain sensing. In this paper, the spectral peak shift of the plasmon resonance of an optical fibre containing gold NPs under axial strain was analysed. A modified Lorentz-Drude (LD) model with the T-matrix method was used and the spectral peak shifts of spheroidal NPs under strain were calculated. An approximate analytical expression was derived for faster calculation. The modelling presented in this paper shows that the ratio of the change of the peak wavelength to the strain can be related to the refractive index (RI) change of the optical fibre under strain, the shape change of the gold NP, and the RI change of the gold NP. The peak shift was also observed experimentally in an optical adhesive containing gold NPs under compression. The peak shifts were analysed at different RI of the optical fibres, 1.35, 1.45, 1.55 and 1.65 respectively, in order to cover the range of RI of fused silica and some polymer materials. The results confirm experimentally that the applied axial strain can induce the peak wavelength shift by the NPs. By choosing a different optical fibre or the properties of the NPs, the wavelength change ratio has the potential to be tuned, which may be used for highly sensitive strain sensing.

Optical fibre backscatter reflectometry is an important technique for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). In recent years, increasing the intensity of backscattered light in backscatter reflectometry has shown the advantage of improving the signal detection in shape sensing and temperature detection due to the increase of signal to noise ratio and this approach could potentially be used to improve the performance of an SHM system. Doping nanoparticles (NPs) is a method to increase the intensity of backscattered light in distributed fibre optic sensing. The increased intensity of light backscattered by the NPs needs to be investigated to design suitable optical sensing fibres with NPs for backscatter reflectometry. In this work NPs were added to refractive index matching liquid and tested with commercial NP suspensions experimentally between the tips of two optical fibres. An estimate of the intensity of backscattered light from the NPs in this structure was performed by simulation to give a better understanding of the expected levels of intensities of scattered light from NPs in this distributed fibre optic sensing configuration. We present analytical models based on Mie theory and the Monte Carlo Method. Simulated results are presented, for a broad bandwidth Gaussian spectra shape incident light with a central wavelength around 1550 nm, to match the experimental conditions in this work. The novelty is in developing this model for scattered light by NPs at optical fibre interfaces and the evaluation of the possibility of detection by the calculated scattered intensity levels.

This study forms a part of the research in using nanoparticles (NPs) to increase the intensity of light scattering signal in the optical fibres. Increasing the intensity of the backscattered light signal in the optical fibres shows the potential to increase the signal-to-noise ratio in order to improve the sensitivity of the backscatter reflectometry. Doping NPs into the optical fibres can greatly increase the scattered light. However, it is not easy to manufacture NP-doped optical fibres to test different designs. To overcome this problem, in our former work we used the method of dropping refractive index matching liquid containing gold NPs at the optical fibres end tips to investigate the intensity change of the scattered light from the interfaces. In this paper, some new initial experimental results for the scattered light between the optical fibre end tips are shown. Gold NPs have been mixed into the optical adhesive (Norland) and is then dropped and cured at the optical fibre end tips. A backscatter reflectometer (LUNA ODiSI-B) was used in the experiment to measure the intensity of scattered light distribution between the optical fibre end tips. We investigated 4 cases of light scattering between the optical fibre end tips: (i) the backscattered light intensity distribution in the case of the air gap between the optical fibre end tips; (ii) the backscattered light intensity distribution with optical adhesive between the optical fibre end tips; (iii) the backscattered light intensity distribution with optical adhesive containing gold NPs (gold nanopowder (<100 nm), Sigma Aldrich) between the optical fibre end tips before curing process and (iv) the backscattered light intensity distribution with optical adhesive containing gold NPs between the optical fibre end tips after the curing process. Our initial findings are that the scattered light by gold NPs at the optical fibre interfaces can be detected by the backscatter reflectometer. By obtaining the differential signal between the distributed light scattering by cured optical adhesive containing gold NPs and only optical adhesive between the optical fibre end tips, the light scattered by the gold NPs has be determined.

A conventional distributed fiber optic sensing system offers close to linear sensitivity along the fiber length. However gold nanoparticles (NP) have been shown to be able to enhance the contrast ratio to improve the quality of signal detection. The challenge in improving the contrast of reflected signals is to optimise the nanoparticle doping concentration over the densed sensing length to make best use of the distributed fiber sensing hardware. In this paper, light enhancement by spherical gold NPs in the optical fibers was analyzed by considering the size-induced NP refractive index changes. This was achieved by building a new model to relate backscattered light from a gold NP suspension between the optical fiber end tips and backscattered light from gold NPs in the core of the optical fiber. The paper provides a model to determine the optimized sizes and concentrations of NPs for sensing at different desired penetration depths in the optical fiber.