Smart optical fiber sensor for impact localization on planar structures

This work shows a method to determine, in real time, external impact location on planar structures based on responses of optical fiber strain sensors. In order to demonstrate experimentally the sensing approach, four fibre Bragg gratings were attached to a polymeric board for detecting the disturbance caused by a drop weight impact. An artificial neural network was used to process the sensor responses and to identify the quadrant location of the impact on the structure. The results demonstrate that such location can be predicted with correct classification rate of approximately 85.0% in validation step.