General-purpose photoelastic fiber optic accelerometer

This paper describes a general-purpose photoelastic fiber optic accelerometer having a sensitivity of 2 V/g and a resolution of 2.5 mg over a frequency range extending from 0 to 600 Hz. The unit has a linear amplitude range of 0 to 5g and is sealed in an aluminum case having outside dimensions of 41 mm x 35 mm x 20 mm. It relies on a force transducer made from an optically birefringent material and measurements are made based on the principles of photoelasticity. A low-cost LED is employed as an incoherent light source; multimode optical fibers with a hard plastic cladding are used to transmit signals between the transducer and the conditioning electronics. (C) 1997 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.