The New Jersey Institute of Technology's
Electronic Theses & Dissertations Project

Title:	Polarimetric fiber optic weigh-in-motion sensor
Author:	Wang, Jieping
View Online:	njit-etd1994-138 (xi, 95 pages ~ 2.9 MB pdf)
Department:	Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Degree:	Master of Science
Program:	Electrical Engineering
Document Type:	Thesis
Advisory Committee:	Ansari, Farhad (Committee chair) Niver, Edip (Committee member) Grebel, Haim (Committee member)
Date:	1994-10
Keywords:	Trucks -- Weight -- Measurement Optical detectors
Availability:	Unrestricted
Abstract:	During the past decade, the demand for new methods of measuring the weight of moving vehicles has grown substantially. In the 1980's, several techniques for weighing vehicles in motion were developed. However, they often suffer from high installation and maintenance costs as well as low accuracy. This thesis describes a new technique based on polarization preserving optical fibers. A fibercore HB600 Bow-Tie fiber with an initial beat length of 1.16 mm was employed in the present study. Sensor response is discussed in terms of the effects of force amplitudes and velocities on the calibration parameter Tf. Tf is a function of the amplitude as well as the velocity of applied loading. Therefore, calibration of the sensor should be achieved through regression analysis of the load-fringe data for the entire spectrum of the desired force velocities. This also implied that the variation of beat length under such loading conditions is dependent on the amplitude and velocity.