Specialty Photonics Division

Your Optical Fiber Solutions Partner™

Optical Fiber, Cables, Components and Modules

Industries and Applications

Fiber Sensing

Optical fiber’s small cross-section, long length, dielectric nature, and reliability enhance industrial sensing and non-destructive monitoring in harsh and inaccessible environments.

OFS offers many products and capabilities that can be configured and used to:

• sense temperature at many points over long distances
• detect physical changes related to strain
• provide immunity to electrical noise
• facilitate 2-D or 3-D seismic mapping
• monitor strain in high-pressure vessels
• provide temperature feedback for industrial controls
• sense strain for structural health monitoring and preventive maintenance
• measure high-temperature liquids and gasses in harsh environments

Fiber optic sensors offer a practical way to monitor structural integrity of bridges and pipelines; report temperature in oil, gas, geothermal, and carbon sequestration wells; detect the presence of specific environmental chemicals; and enable miniaturization of precision gyroscopes to detect position and movement.

OFS Products and Capabilities for Fiber Optic Sensors and Sensing Applications

Specialty fibers are commonly deployed as sensors and, when connected to commercially available interrogation equipment, can provide information on the health and status of mission-critical industrial systems. Often used in place of mechanical strain sensors and thermo-couples, sensor fibers offer the advantage of extremely small cross-section, immunity to electrical noise, and the unique ability to provide thousands of data points along their length.

For distributed temperature sensing (DTS), the optical fiber becomes the sensor. For applications requiring point sensing, fibers can be modified to include OFS’s Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) technology. In addition to the properties discussed above, various coatings can be applied to OFS fibers for enhanced chemical resistance, minimization of hydrogen ingression, and exposure to temperatures exceeding 125°C (260°F).