Plastic optical fiber micro-displacement sensor and preparation method thereof
Technical Field
The invention belongs to the technical field of optical fiber sensing, and particularly relates to a plastic optical fiber micro-displacement sensor with a coupling structure and a preparation method thereof.
Background
The displacement measurement has important significance in the fields of industrial production, aerospace, structural health monitoring and the like. Currently, various measurement technologies can be applied to displacement sensing, such as inductive, capacitive, photoelectric, and fiber-optic displacement sensors. Compared with other types of displacement sensors, the optical fiber displacement sensor has the advantages of electromagnetic interference resistance, corrosion resistance, capability of remote sensing, higher operation flexibility and the like.
Existing optical fiber displacement sensors can be classified into quartz optical fiber displacement sensors and plastic optical fiber displacement sensors according to the optical fiber materials used. Compared with quartz optical fiber, the plastic optical fiber has the unique advantages of large core diameter, good flexibility, visible light operation and the like, and has important application value in the displacement sensing field. For example, patent application No. 201810802189.4, "a plastic optical fiber displacement sensor and a method for manufacturing the same", uses a plastic optical fiber with a V-groove structure for displacement sensing. However, the displacement sensor needs to be pressed with a V-groove structure on a plastic optical fiber, which may cause the mechanical strength of the device to be reduced, and the device has low measurement accuracy, and cannot perform micro-displacement sensing in micron order. In addition, for example, patent application No. CN201510229468.2, "optical fiber displacement sensor based on macrobend loss effect" and patent application No. CN109099847A, "two-dimensional optical fiber displacement sensor based on macrobend loss effect and power coupling", both adopt the coupling effect between two macrobend plastic optical fibers to realize displacement sensing. However, the coupling structure is obtained by directly winding two bare fibers, the coupling efficiency is very low, the coupling output optical signal is very weak and only has nanometer magnitude, so that the coupling structure is easily influenced by noise of a receiving device and ambient light during measurement, the signal-to-noise ratio is poor, the resolution is in millimeter magnitude, and measurement of micrometer magnitude displacement cannot be performed.
Disclosure of Invention
The invention aims to provide a plastic optical fiber micro-displacement sensor which is low in cost, simple in preparation process and capable of carrying out micron-scale displacement sensing.
In order to solve the above problems, a first aspect of the present invention provides a method for manufacturing a curved tapered plastic optical fiber coupling structure micro-displacement sensing probe. Including S1: the preparation of the conical plastic optical fiber adopts an electric soldering iron to heat the plastic optical fiber, and a section of the plastic optical fiber is required to be placed at a position about 1cm above the electric soldering iron during the preparation, so that the temperature of a soldering iron head is heated to about 480 ℃. When the optical fiber is heated to a molten state, stopping heating, outwards stretching two ends of the optical fiber, and thinning the plastic optical fiber in the molten area under the action of a tensile force, so that a biconical plastic optical fiber with two tapered transition areas at two ends and a uniform diameter in the middle is formed; s2: preparing a conical plastic optical fiber coupler, selecting two prepared plastic optical fibers with a double-conical structure, winding the tapered areas of the two plastic optical fibers with the double-conical structure, ensuring that the conical structure parts of the optical fibers are tightly attached to each other as much as possible during winding so as to achieve the purpose of high-efficiency light energy coupling, dripping ultraviolet curing adhesive in the wound coupling area for further improving the coupling efficiency and the stability of the device structure, and then irradiating the ultraviolet light until the ultraviolet light is solidified, wherein the coupling structure is respectively provided with two input ends and two output ends; s3: the preparation method comprises the steps of inserting the prepared conical plastic optical fiber of the coupling structure into a soft U-shaped plastic sleeve, and fixing and sealing two ports of the conical plastic optical fiber of the coupling structure and the plastic optical fiber of the coupling structure by using epoxy resin glue. Preferably, the ferrule has a diameter of about 3 to 5mm and a length greater than the length of the tapered optical fiber.
The invention provides a curved tapered plastic optical fiber coupling structure micro-displacement sensing system, which consists of a light source, a curved coupling structure tapered plastic optical fiber probe, a light detector, a single chip microcomputer processing and control system and a display screen. The light source is input by one of the tapered optical fibers (called active optical fiber), the input end of the other optical fiber (called passive optical fiber) is idle, the two output ends of the optical fiber adopt two detectors to measure the optical power, and the sensor reflects the change of micro-displacement through the change of the splitting ratio of the two output ends.
The present invention may further comprise:
1. the plastic optical fiber is a multimode plastic optical fiber, the outer diameter of the optical fiber is 250-1500 mu m, and the diameter range of the fiber core is 240-1480 mu m.
2. The diameter of the cone waist of the prepared cone-shaped plastic optical fiber is 100-500 mu m, and the diameter of the cone waist of the active cone-shaped optical fiber is smaller than that of the cone waist of the passive cone-shaped optical fiber.
3. The length of the conical plastic optical fiber coupling area is 5-20 mm.
4. The bending radius of the U-shaped plastic sleeve of the optical fiber probe is 2-5 mm.
5. The light source is a red light LED with the central wavelength of 650nm, the photoelectric detector is a photodiode, the singlechip is adopted for data processing, and the data is displayed on the display screen.
The invention works based on evanescent field macrobending coupling effect principle. Which can be illustrated as follows: when the plastic optical fiber of the coupling structure is bent, an optical field in the input optical fiber core can deviate towards the outer side of the bend, a part of fiber core modes in the optical fiber can be converted into cladding modes, the cladding modes cannot be ignored, total reflection can be carried out on the interface of the cladding/external medium, evanescent waves are generated, and under the action of the evanescent waves, a part of light energy can be coupled into the passive optical fiber from the active optical fiber. When the displacement changes, the bending radius of the plastic optical fiber of the coupling structure can be changed, so that evanescent waves are enhanced, the coupling efficiency between the two optical fibers is changed, and the light splitting ratio of output light of the two optical fibers is changed. Therefore, by monitoring the change in the splitting ratio, the amount of change in the displacement can be detected. And the adoption of the conical plastic optical fiber can greatly enhance the intensity of evanescent waves and effectively increase the coupling efficiency between the two conical optical fibers, so that a considerable part of energy is coupled into the passive optical fiber even under the condition of small displacement, thereby generating obvious splitting ratio change and improving the sensitivity and the resolution of displacement detection.
Compared with the prior art, the invention has the following advantages:
1) the manufacturing of the micro-displacement sensing probe does not need complex equipment, does not need corrosion or polishing, has simple manufacturing process, easy control and low cost, and is convenient for commercial production.
2) The micro-displacement sensing probe adopts the bent conical plastic optical fiber, so that the intensity of a transmission optical evanescent field can be effectively increased, the coupling efficiency between the two optical fibers is improved, the sensitivity and the signal-to-noise ratio of a device can be improved, and the micro-displacement sensing is realized.
3) The light power measured by the two output ends of the device of the invention are from the same light source and have the same light power fluctuation, therefore, the influence caused by the light source fluctuation can be eliminated by measuring the coupling ratio to reflect the change of the displacement.
Drawings
FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a tapered plastic optical fiber sensing system with a curved coupling structure according to the present invention;
FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of a process for preparing a plastic optical fiber bicone structure by a fusion tapering method according to the present invention;
FIG. 3 is a schematic structural diagram of a plastic optical fiber micro-displacement sensing probe with a bending type coupling structure according to the present invention;
FIG. 4 is a graph of the relationship between the measured displacement and the splitting ratio of the micro-displacement sensor according to the present invention and a fitting curve;
Detailed Description
For the purpose of promoting a better understanding of the objects and advantages of the invention, reference should be made to the following detailed description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, which are not intended to limit the scope of the invention, but rather to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the invention.
Referring to fig. 1, the schematic diagram of the micro-displacement sensing system of the tapered plastic optical fiber with the bending type coupling structure of the present invention is shown, and the micro-displacement sensing system is composed of a light source 1, an input optical fiber 2, a probe fixing part 3, an optical fiber sensing probe 4, a displacement device baffle 5, an output optical fiber 6, a photoelectric detector 7 (composed of two identical optical power meters), and a signal processing and display unit 8. The working process is as follows: light emitted by the light source enters one of the tapered plastic optical fibers (active optical fibers) through the input optical fiber, and in the coupling area, due to the strong evanescent field effect of the bent tapered optical fiber, light energy can be coupled from the input optical fiber to the other optical fiber (passive optical fiber). And finally, measuring the output light power of the two optical fibers by two same optical power meters, then processing the data, calculating the splitting ratio and displaying the splitting ratio.
When the displacement is changed, the bending radius of the optical fiber probe is changed along with the displacement, so that the optical field transmitted in the optical fiber is distorted, the splitting ratio is changed, and the variation of the displacement can be detected by monitoring the splitting ratio of the probe. When the sensor probe works, the sensor probe can be arranged between a fixed plate and a movable plate, and the displacement can be changed by changing the position of the movable plate. The operation of the sensor will be explained below by taking the reduction of the bending radius of the probe as an example. As the bend radius of the optical fiber decreases, the amount of deviation of the optical field of the light transmitted inside the active optical fiber from the bend outer direction increases, thereby allowing more light energy to enter the fiber cladding. The part of light can be totally reflected on the interface of the cladding and the air to generate a stronger evanescent field, so that more light energy can be coupled into the passive optical fiber, and the splitting ratio is changed. Therefore, the change curve of the splitting ratio along with the displacement can be calibrated, and then the change condition of the displacement can be obtained under the condition of measuring the splitting ratio by utilizing the curve relation. Wherein, the size of the light splitting ratio can be expressed by the following formula,
in the formula ICoupling ofIs the output light intensity of the active optical fiber end in the sensing probe IActive sourceThe light intensity of the output end of the passive optical fiber of the sensing probe is shown. The value range of the splitting ratio is 0-1, the larger the value is, the more light enters the coupling optical fiber from the input optical fiber, namely the higher the coupling efficiency is, the smaller the value is, the lower the coupling efficiency is.
Referring to fig. 2, a schematic diagram of a plastic optical fiber bicone structure prepared by the fusion tapering method according to this embodiment is shown. The optical fiber used was a common commercial plastic optical fiber (CK40) having a core material of polymethyl methacrylate and a refractive index of 1.49, a clad material of fluororesin and a refractive index of 1.41, an outer diameter of 1000. + -.1. mu.m, and a core diameter of 980. + -.1. mu.m. The preparation process of the biconical plastic optical fiber adopts an electric soldering iron 9 as a heat source for heating, and a section of the plastic optical fiber 10 needs to be placed at a position about 1cm above the electric soldering iron. During preparation, the temperature of the soldering iron head needs to be heated to about 480 ℃, when the optical fiber is heated to a molten state, the heating is stopped, the two ends of the optical fiber are outwards stretched by using a numerical control displacement table, and the plastic optical fiber in the molten area is thinned under the action of the tensile force, so that the biconical plastic optical fiber with the tapered transition areas at the two ends and the uniform diameter in the middle is formed.
Referring to fig. 3, a schematic diagram of a tapered plastic optical fiber with a bending-type coupling structure is shown. In the figure, the optical fiber 12 is an active optical fiber, i.e., a light source input end; the optical fiber 13 is a passive fiber. The preparation of the coupling structure requires mutually winding tapering areas of two prepared plastic optical fibers with a biconical structure, ensuring that the conical structures of the optical fibers are wound and tightly attached as much as possible, then irradiating ultraviolet curing glue in the coupling area until the glue is cured by ultraviolet light, and ensuring the stability of the coupling structure; the preparation of the conical plastic optical fiber probe with the bending coupling structure needs to insert the prepared conical plastic optical fiber with the coupling structure into a soft U-shaped plastic sleeve 14, then the two ports of the conical plastic optical fiber are fixedly sealed by epoxy resin glue, the diameter of the sleeve is about 4mm, the length of the sleeve is greater than that of the conical optical fiber, and the bending radius of the sleeve is 5 mm. And thus, the preparation of the conical plastic optical fiber sensor probe with the bending coupling structure is completed. Preferably, the uniform portion of the input tapered plastic optical fiber has a diameter of 100 μm and the uniform portion of the coupling tapered plastic optical fiber has a diameter of 200 μm.
FIG. 4 is a graph showing the relationship between the displacement and the splitting ratio measured by the micro-displacement sensor of the present invention. The data were measured under reduced displacement test conditions. It can be seen from the test data that the splitting ratio tends to increase as the displacement amount decreases. Through multiple tests, the detection precision of the sensor is about 20 mu m, the measuring range is about 2.1mm, and the sensitivity is 0.0003/micrometer. The expression for the sensitivity S is as follows,
in the formula, Δ T is a variation of the splitting ratio, and Δ d is a variation of the displacement.