Fiber Bragg Grating Sensor for Railway System

1. Introduction
Rail transport is becoming very important means of transportation today. With the advancement
of technology, high-speed railway network connecting major cities is expanding rapidly in a lot
of countries. Due to the increased expectation in high-speed rail, rail line and carrying capacity
safety remains a major concern of experts from all over the world. Condition monitoring
measurement system is the best solution to ensure safe and cut down the cost of railroad
transportation operation. A well-designed monitoring system significantly improve safety and
reduces hardware maintenance cost. In this paper, a novel health monitoring system using optical
fibers experimented by Department of Electrical Engineering, Polytechnic University, Hong
Kong will be described. The experiment group took advantage of optical fiber sensor
characteristic including electromagnetic immunity (EMI), reliability, and durability. Therefore,
the use of optical fiber as both tasks, specifically, the sensing element and the transmission media
can minimize the interference of electromagnetic waves from the external factors like traction
motors or the power lines of mainline systems.

2. Fiber Bragg Grating Sensors

Fiber Bragg Grating FBG sensor are small periodic structures created inside the 9 micro meter
core diameter of standard single mode optical fiber (Figure 1). Any change in strain, temperature,
pressure, vibration, etc, to the fiber at the Bragg grating will cause a magnitude shift of the
reflections allowing for very accurate measurements to be performed.

Figure 1 An expanded view of a FBG sensor

2.1. The Working Principle of FBG. An Fiber Bragg Grating

When a FBG is illuminating by a broad-spectrum light beam, reflections from each segment of
alternating refractive index interfere only for a specific wavelength of light, called the Bragg

wavelength, described in equation (1). This causes the FBG to reflect a specific frequency of
light while transmitting all others (Figure 2)
(1)
In this equation b is the Bragg wavelength, n is the effective refractive index of the fiber core,
and is the spacing between the gratings called the grating period.
The refractive index n and grating period of an FBG will be affected if there is any change in
temperature and strain which results in a shift in the reflected wavelength. Equation 2 describes
the change of wavelength of an FBG due to strain and temperature

(2)
In the equation 2, is the wavelength shift and o is the initial wavelength. Due to the
wavelength of light which is not affected by electromagnetic fields, FBG sensor monitoring
system is immune to electromagnetic interference and more stable than any electrical monitoring
system which is typical in an electrified railway.

Figure 2 Fiber Grating Basics

In figure 3, Bragg gratings are made by illuminating the core of a suitable optical Fiber with
intense UV laser light. The UV photons have sufficient energy to damage the structure of the
fiber as well as break the highly stable bond of silicon-oxygen and increase its refractive index
slightly. A periodic spatial variation in the intensity of UV light, created by the interference of
two coherent beams placed over the Fiber, gives increase to a corresponding periodic variation in
the refractive index of the Fiber.

Figure 3 FBG fabrication

2.2 Method of FBG Interrogation and Wavelength-Division Multiplexing (WDM)

A widely-implemented approach is to illuminate the FBG with a narrowband tunable light source
called wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) techniques. The principle behind WDM is
simple. This provides the ability to daisy chain multiple sensors with different Bragg
characteristic along a single fiber over long distances. Because of the advantage features of FBG,
sensor measurements remain accurate even with light intensity losses/attenuations due to
bending or transmission.
The number of sensors that we can incorporate within a single fiber depends on the total
available wavelength range of the interrogator and the wavelength range of operation of each
sensor. Each fiber array of sensors can usually inscribed anywhere from one to more than 80
sensors until the reflected wavelengths do not overlap in the optical spectrum (Figure 4) since
typical interrogators provide a measurement range of 60 to 80 nm

Figure 4: Each FBG optical sensor in an array must occupy a unique spectral range.

3. Experiment: Monitoring of Imperfections in Train Wheels.

Figure 5 FBG sensor network for imperfection wheel monitoring

The length of the optical fiber can be as long as 100 km and many FBGs with different grating
characteristics can be inscribed on the same optical Fiber. Figure 5 shows schematic of Train
Load balance index monitoring system. The sensor group 1543, 1547, 1552, 1557 are installed
on up track while sensor group 1531, 1535, 1538, 1540 are installed on down track, the sensor
network then is connected to a commercially available interrogator system in the control room.
Figure 6 shows a typical pickup from a sensor installed on the track with the passage of a 12-car
train. It is noted that there are 4 wheels in one car and hence the first 4 peaks on the left-hand
side of the upper figure correspond to the first car. It can be seen that there are more vibrations in
Cars 6 and 8 (when counting from the left hand side) and such observation would allow the
engineer to pay attention to cars with abnormal or excessive vibrations. Subsequent investigation
revealed that there were roundness problems in the wheels of Cars 6 and 8.

Figure 6 Experiment Result

With the installation of the sensors network on the tracks, a wealth of investigations could be
performed immediately. For instance, from the strain measurements at the track, it was suspected
that these noisy trains might have relatively imperfect wheels. The principle of wheel
imperfection detection by FBG strain sensors installed at track is based on the fact that polygonal
wheels such as flange pits, wheel flats, and particularly out-of-round wheels, will exert periodic
impact force on the track.
4. Summary
We can come up with the idea that FBG can be used as sensitive, stable, strain and temperature
sensors or built into transducers for other facts such as pressure, acceleration etc. Besides that,
key advantages of FBG over other types of fiber-optic sensor are: high strength, linearity, robust
signal and ease of multiplexing. Interrogation methods offer accuracy and stability, flexibility,
they are well-developed but relatively high cost.

The paper is focused on the use of FBG sensors for railway monitoring system. In essence, this
study reports the use of FBG sensors system for detecting vibrations from noisy trains thereby
paving the way for the development of an essential requirement for a modern railway that is an
anti-derailment system. Apart from the objectives mentioned above, the FBG system could be
made for many additional railway applications including the following:
(a) Axle counter.
(b) Train identification
(c) Speed detection.
In summary, a small piece of FBG sensor can generate lots of train operation information with
good data integrity. It can be employed to monitor the train running performances by building a
virtual system on top of the conventional one. Before the maturity of the FBG sensor technology

are able to be put into practical usage in the railway industry, further analysis and measurements
together with a fully blown development on rail is necessary.

5. References
1. Research paper: Development of a Fiber-Optic Sensing System for Train Vibration and
Train Weight Measurements in Hong Kong, C. C. Lai, Jacob, C.P.Kam, David C. C.
Leung, Tony K. Y. Lee, Aiken Y. M. Tam, S. L. Ho, H. Y. Tam and Michael S. Y. Liu.
2. Dr. Crispin Doyle Senior Applications Engineer, Smart Fibers Ltd. 2003.
3. K. Y. Lee, K. K. Lee, and S. L. Ho, Exploration of using FBG sensor for axle counter in
railway engineering,WSEAS Transactions on Systems, vol. 3, no. 6, pp. 24402447,
2004.
4. Advanced Optical Fiber Bragg Grating Sensor Systems for Railway Monitoring, the
Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 2013.
5. Fundamentals of Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) Optical Sensing, National Instrument,
Publish Date: Jan 22, 2016.

6. Related research papers:

1. Wei, C., Lai, C., Liu, S., Chung, W., Ho, T. K., Tam, H., Ho, S. L., McCusker, A., Kam, J.
& Lee, K. Y. (2010). A fiber Bragg grating sensor system for train axle counting. 10 (12),
1905-1912.
2. Real-Time Monitoring of Railway Traffic Using Fiber Bragg Grating Sensors Massimo
Leonardo Filograno, Pedro Corredera Guilln, Alberto Rodrguez-Barrios, Sonia MartnLpez, Miguel Rodrguez-Plaza, lvaro Andrs-Alguacil, and Miguel Gonzlez-Herrez,
IEEE Sensors Journal, Vol. 12, No. 1, January 2012.
3. Intelligent Infrastructure for Rail and Tramways Using Optical Fibre Sensors S. J.
Buggya , S. W. Jamesa , R.Carrollb , Jay Jaiswalc , S. Stainesa and R. P. Tatama,
Department of Engineering Photonics, School of Engineering, Cranfield University,
Bedfordshire, MK43 0AL.
4. Application of FBF sensors in smart railway, Andrija Milojevic, Misa Toomic, Nenad T.
Pavlovic, Scientific-expert conference on railways, Railcon 12.
5. A Development of Real-time Monitoring System in the Gauge Change Facilities using
Fiber Optic Sensor Technology 1 Dong-Hoon Kang, 2 Seung-Ho Jang, 3 Ji-Taek Oh
Korea Railroad Research Institute (KRRI), Uiwang-City, Korea.