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• April 28, 2016 Create Date
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Application of Fiber Optic Instrumentation

This AGARDograph presents an introduction to fiber optic systems and is intended to provide a basic
understanding of the utilization of these systems for aircraft instrumentation. It documents the current state
of the art and provides references for users of this technology to track the rapid advances expected in fiber
optic technology in the coming years.
Revolutionary advances in fiber optic technology, as applied to flight-test instrumentation, have been
achieved over the last decade and are expected to continue at a rapid pace for the foreseeable future. There
has been significant maturation in both the manufacturing of fibers and the miniaturization of hardware,
which has enabled movement of this technology from controlled laboratory environments to realistic aircraft
operations. The ability to closely space sensors on the fibers has improved by orders of magnitude and the
capability for continuous sensors is rapidly becoming feasible. Fiber optic systems will revolutionize flight-
test instrumentation for all of the NATO members, potentially eliminating strain gages and their associated
wiring while collecting more accurate and densely spaced measurements at a significantly reduced system
weight. Fiber optic instrumentation provides the ability to capture system—wide stress, strain, and temperature
measurements far beyond classic aircraft flight-test instrumentation applications. The technology also
enables the determination of many other derived engineering parameters such as structural shape, and applied
loads; information that has not been available before with conventional aircraft sensors systems.
This AGARDograph documents the current state of the art for this technology and provides references for
users to track the rapid advances expected in fiber optics in the coming years. One application for this
technology could be to a wide range of NATO aircraft systems in order to establish a comprehensive set of
data for aging aircraft. Other future applications could entail embedding fiber optic systems in composite
structures as they are manufactured, allowing extremely light-weight flexible structures to be actively
controlled, giving enhanced capability to air, surface, and ground—based NATO systems.