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Browsing by Author "May, Russell G."

Now showing 1 - 10 of 10
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    Analysis and Applications of Microstructure and Holey Optical Fibers
    Kim, Jeong I. (Virginia Tech, 2003-09-10)
    Microstructure and photonic crystal fibers with periodic as well as random refractive-index distributions are investigated. Two cases corresponding to fibers with one-dimensional (1D) radial index distributions and two-dimensional (2D) transverse index distributions are considered. For 1D geometries with an arbitrary number of cladding layers, exact analytical solutions of guided modes are obtained using a matrix approach. In this part, for random index distributions, the average transmission properties are calculated and the influence of glass/air ratio on these properties is assessed. Important transmission properties of the fundamental mode, including normalized propagation constant, chromatic dispersion, field distributions, and effective area, are evaluated. For 2D geometries, the numerical techniques, FDTD (Finite-Difference Time-Domain) method and FDM (Finite Difference Method), are utilized. First, structures with periodic index distributions are examined. The investigation is then extended to microstructure optical fibers with random index distributions. Design of 2D microstructure fibers with random air-hole distributions is undertaken with the aim of achieving single-mode guiding property and small effective area. The former is a unique feature of the holey fiber with periodic air-hole arrangement and the latter is a suitable property for nonlinear fiber devices. Measurements of holey fibers with random air-hole distributions constitute an important experimental task of this research. Using a section of a holey fiber fabricated in the draw tower facility at Virginia Tech, measurements of transmission spectra and fiber attenuation are performed. Also, test results for far-field pattern measurements are presented. Another objective of this dissertation is to explore new applications for holey fibers with random or periodic hole distributions. In the course of measuring the holey fibers, it was noticed that robust temperature-insensitive pressure sensors can be made with these fibers. This offers an opportunity for new low-cost and reliable pressure fiber-optic sensors. Incorporating gratings into holey fibers in conjunction with the possibility of dynamic tuning offers desirable characteristics with potential applications in communications and sensing. Injecting gases or liquids in holey fibers with gratings changes their transmission characteristics. These changes may be exploited in designing tunable optical filters for communication applications or making gas/liquid sensor devices.
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    Controlled Fabrication System of Fabry-Perot Optical Fiber Sensors
    Huo, Wei (Virginia Tech, 1998-09-23)
    The use of optical fiber sensors is increasing widely in industry, civil, medicine, defense and research. Among different categories of these sensors is the Extrinsic Fabry-Perot interferometer (EFPI) sensor which is inherently simple and requires only modest amount of interface electronics. These advantages make it suitable for many practical applications. Investigating a cost-effective, reliable and repeatable method for optical fiber sensor fabrication is challenging work. In this thesis, a system for controlled fabrication of Fabry-Perot optical fiber sensors is developed and presented as the first attempt for the long-term goal of automated EFPI sensor fabrication. The sensor fabrication control system presented here implements a real-time control of a carbon dioxide (CO₂) laser as sensor bonding power, an optical fiber white light interferometric subsystem for real-time monitoring and measurement of the air gap separation in the Fabry-Perot sensor probe, and real-time control of a piezoelectric (PZT) motion subsystem for sensor alignment. The design of optoelectronic hardware and computer software is included. A large number of sensors are fabricated using this system and are tested under high temperature and high pressure. This system as a prototype system shows the potential in automated sensor fabrication.
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    The Diode Laser Source and the Spatial Light Modulator's Driver Electronics for Miniaturized Holographic 3D Imaging
    Subramani, Dinesh (Virginia Tech, 1998-12-17)
    The purpose of this thesis is to develop a low-cost, high power laser diode/fiber illumination system and to design the driver electronics of the spatial light modulator (SLM) for holographic, three dimensional (3D) imaging. A miniaturized laser diode/fiber/polarizing illumination system capable of 15mW of output at a wavelength of 690nm is designed, fabricated, and tested. The size limitations of various commercially available SLM drivers are described and the design to overcome them is suggested. The design describes in detail the timing considerations of the hardware interface and the psuedocode of the software interface between the host computer and the SLM. Experiments carried out to study the spatial uniformity of the SLM and the distortion due to the beam splitter on the structured output from the LIM are explained.
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    Manufacturing Of A Fiber Optic Young's Double Pinhole Interferometer For Use As A 3D Profilometer
    Pennington, Timothy L.; Wang, Anbo; Xaio, Hai; May, Russell G. (Optical Society of America, 2000-05-01)
    The method used to manufature a Young's double pinhole interferometer is discussed. This interferometer is destined to be used in a surface profilometer using two wavelengths so that the zero order fringe can be determined. Hence stringent requirements are placed on the absolute length difference between the two output fibers of a single mode coupler. These requirements are discussed along with the manufacturing process. The interferometer is shown along with measurements showing a length difference on the order of 6 mu m. (C) 2000 Optical Society of America.
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    Miniature Fiber Optic Viscoelasticity Sensor for Composite Cure Monitoring
    May, Russell G. (Virginia Tech, 1998-06-10)
    The most promising strategy for reducing the cost of manufacturing polymer matrix composites while improving their reliability is the use of sensors during processing to permit control of the cure cycle based on measurements of the material's internal state. While sensors have been demonstrated that infer the material state indirectly through measurements of acoustic impedance, electrical impedance, or refractive index, sensors that directly measure parameters critical to composite manufacturing, such as resin rheology and resin hydrostatic pressure, would improve characterization of thermoset resins during cure. Here we describe the development of a multifunctional fiber optic sensor that may be embedded in a composite part during lay-up to monitor the state of the polymer matrix during processing. This sensor will output quantitative data which will indicate the viscoelasticity of the thermoset matrix resin. The same sensor will additionally function as a strain sensor following fabrication, capable of monitoring residual strains due to manufacturing or in-service internal strains.
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    Miniaturized 3--D Mapping System Using a Fiber Optic Coupler as a Young's Double Pinhole Interferometer
    Pennington, Timothy L. (Virginia Tech, 2000-06-05)
    Three--dimensional mapping has many applications including robot navigation, medical diagnosis and industrial inspection. However, many applications remain unfilled due to the large size and complex nature of typical 3--D mapping systems. The use of fiber optics allows the miniaturization and simplification of many optical systems. This research used a fiber optic coupler to project a fringe pattern onto an object to be profiled. The two outputs fibers of the coupler were brought close together to form the pinholes of a Young's Double Pinhole Interferometer. This provides the advantages of this simple interferometer without the disadvantage of power loss by the customary method of spatially filtering a collimated laser beam with a pair of pinholes. The shape of the object is determined by analyzing the fringe pattern. The system developed has a resolution of 0.1mm and a measurement error less than 1.5\% of the object's depth. The use of fiber optics provides many advantages including: remote location of the laser source (which also means remote location of heat sources, a critical requirement for many applications); easy accommodation of several laser sources, including gas lasers and high--power, low--cost fiber pigtailed laser diodes; and variation of source wavelength without disturbing the pinholes. The principal advantages of this mapping system over existing methods are its small size, minimum number of critically aligned components, and remote location of the laser sources.
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    Optical Scanning Extrinsic Fabry-Perot Interferometer For Absolute Microdisplacement Measurement
    Li, Tianchu Li; May, Russell G.; Wang, Anbo; Claus, Richard O. (Optical Society of America, 1997-02-01)
    We report an optical-scanning, dual-fiber, extrinsic Fabry-Perot interferometer system for absolute measurement of microdisplacement. The system involves two air-gapped Fabry-Perot cavities, formed by fiber end faces, functioning as sensing and reference elements. Taking the scanning wavelength as an interconverter to compare the gap length of the sensing head with the reference-cavity length yields the absolute measurement of the sensing-cavity length. The measurement is independent of the wavelength-scanning accuracy, and the reference-cavity length can be self-calibrated simply by one's changing the sensing-head length by an accurate value. (C) 1997 Optical Society of America.
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    Sapphire Fibers: Optical Attenuation And Splicing Techniques
    Barnes, Adam E.; May, Russell G.; Gollapudi, Sridhar; Claus, Richard O. (Optical Society of America, 1995-12-01)
    The optical attenuation in sapphire fibers was examined. Attenuation was found to depend heavily on injection conditions. A number of techniques for making sapphire-silica fiber splices were attempted, with an effort toward optimizing injection conditions in the sapphire fiber. The most successful of these techniques, interior capillary-tube splicing, produced robust splices with an attenuation of less than 1 dB.
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    Self-Calibrated Interferometric/Intensity Based Fiber Optic Temperature Sensors
    Wang, Zhiyong (Virginia Tech, 2000-12-12)
    To fulfill the objective of providing robust and reliable fiber optic temperature sensors capable of operating in harsh environments, a novel type of fiber optic sensor system titled self-calibrated interferometric/intensity-based (SCIIB) fiber optic temperature sensor system is presented in this thesis including the detailed research work on the principle analysis, design, modeling, implementation and performance evaluation of the system. The SCIIB fiber optic temperature sensor system shows us an innovative fiber optic sensor system compared with traditional fiber optic sensors. In addition to the general benefits of the traditional fiber optic sensors, the SCIIB fiber optic sensor system possesses several unique advantages. By taking advantage of the Split-Spectrum technique developed in Photonics Lab at Virginia Tech, the SCIIB sensor technology possesses the capability of Self-Calibration that can fully compensate for the fluctuation of optical source power and the variations of fiber losses. It combines the advantages of both the interferometric-based and the intensity-based fiber optic sensors in a single system. A multimode fiber-based SCIIB temperature sensor system is designed and successfully implemented. Comprehensive experiments are performed to evaluate the principle of SCIIB technology and the performance of the multimode fiber-based SCIIB temperature sensor system. The experiment results illustrate that the development of the SCIIB fiber optic temperature sensor system provides a reliable tool for the temperature measurement capable of operation in high temperature harsh environments.
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    Self-Calibrated Interferometric/Intensity-Based Fiber Optic Pressure Sensors
    Xiao, Hai (Virginia Tech, 2000-08-24)
    To fulfill the objective of providing robust and reliable fiber optic pressure sensors capable of operating in harsh environments, this dissertation presents the detailed research work on the design, modeling, implementation, analysis, and performance evaluation of the novel fiber optic self-calibrated interferometric/intensity-based (SCIIB) pressure sensor system. By self-referencing its two channels outputs, for the first time to our knowledge, the developed SCIIB technology can fully compensate for the fluctuation of source power and the variations of fiber losses. Based on the SCIIB principle, both multimode and single-mode fiber-based SCIIB sensor systems were designed and successfully implemented. To achieve all the potential advantages of the SCIIB technology, the novel controlled thermal bonding method was proposed, designed, and developed to fabricate high performance fiber optic Fabry-Perot sensor probes with excellent mechanical strength and temperature stability. Mathematical models of the sensor in response to the pressure and temperature are studied to provide a guideline for optimal design of the sensor probe. The solid and detailed noise analysis is also presented to provide a better understanding of the performance limitation of the SCIIB system. Based on the system noise analysis results, optimization measures are proposed to improve the system performance. Extensive experiments have also been conducted to systematically evaluate the performance of the instrumentation systems and the sensor probes. The major test results give us the confidence to believe that the development of the fiber optic SCIIB pressure sensor system provides a reliable pressure measurement tool capable of operating in high pressure, high temperature harsh environments.