Design and manufacturing of a FO-based monitoRing for load identification on aeronautical structures

The FO-based MonitoRing Sensor was developed starting from an idea of C.I.R.A., the Italian Aerospace Research Center, as a tool studied for a Load Identification. The transducer is made of glass/epoxy composite material. The ability of composite material to integrate optical fibres is exploited. The MonitoRing is deformable and can be applied on Adaptive Structures. Fibres are allocated in different layers and in single or multi loop, this allows to reconstruct the applied loads. In this work a Finite Element approach is used to simulate a transducer working under specific types of action and extrapolate different deformation fields trough a fibre optic circular path. Then the numerical results are compared with the experimental results, which have been performed with LUNA technology and FBGs.