Civil Engineering
The potential benefits offered by optical fiber sensors in Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) have generated increasing interest in the civil engineering industry over the last few years. Of specific interest to the industry is the contribution that SHM can make to a condition based maintenance regime, bringing with it savings in the cost of ownership of a structure. The savings arise from increased availability and extended service life of the structure through timely preventative maintenance, reduced routine maintenance costs, reduced remedial repairs and, potentially, reduced insurance through risk mitigation.

SHM has a specific value in large buildings within earthquake zones. The inclusion of Smart Fibres' technology into such an application would allow the safety of a building after seismic activity to be immediately assessed, and provide a greater understanding of the building dynamics, so helping safer designs to be developed. Optical fiber strain sensing is ideally suited to composite materials, and is well suited to the increasing use of composite components, patches and wraps in civil engineering.

With Smart Fibres' range of Smart FBG sensors, the technology can also be applied to steel and concrete structures, and embedded within road pavements.

Further details of our involvement in the development of civil engineering applications can be seen within our projects and research pages.