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PhosFOS is a research and technology development project co-funded by the European Commission.
Project Description
PHOSFOS (Photonic Skins For Optical Sensing) [1] aims to develop a flexible and stretchable foil or skin that integrates the optical sensing elements with optical and electrical devices as well as onboard signal processing and wireless communications. This skin can be wrapped around, embedded in, attached and anchored to irregularly shaped and/or moving objects or bodies and will allow quasi-distributed sensing of mechanical quantities such as deformation, pressure, stress or strain. This approach potentially gives a significant advnatage over conventional snesing systems because of the portablility of the resulting systems and the extended measurement range.
The sensing technology is based around sensing elements called Fiber_Bragg_Grating (FBGS) that are fabricated in standard single core silica fibers, highly birefringent Microstructured_fiber (MSF) and Polymer_fibers (POF). The silica MSFs will be designed to exhibit almost zero temperature sensitivity to cope with the traditional temperature cross-sensitivity issues of conventional fiber sensors. These specialty fibers will be modeled, designed, fabricated within the programme. FBGS written in POF fibers will also be used since their length can be stretched up to 300% before breaking. This allows them to be used under conditions that would normally result in catastrophic failure of other types of strain sensors.
Once optimized the sensors are embedded into the sensing skin and on the interfaced to the peripheral optoelectronics and electronics.
The photonic skins developed in PHOSFOS will find applications in continuously monitoring the integrity and the behavior of different kinds of structures in e.g. civil engineering (buildings, dams, bridges, roads, tunnels and mines), in aerospace (aircraft wings, helicopter blades) or in energy production (windmill blades) and therefore provide the necessary means for remote early failure, anomaly or danger warning. Applications in healthcare are also being investigated.
Latest results can be found on the PhosFOS EU webpage [1].
Consortium
- [2], Vrije Universiteit Brussel
- [3], Interuniversitair Micro-Electronica Centrum VZW
- [4], Universiteit Gent
- [5], Politechnika Wroclawska
- [6], Uniwersitet Marie Curie Sklodowskiej
- [7], Aston University
- [8], Fiber Optic Sensors and Systems BVBA
- [9], Cyprus University of Technology
- [10], Astasense Limited