Document Type

Thesis

Date of Award

1994

Degree Name

Master of Science in Electrical Engineering - (M.S.)

Department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

First Advisor

Farhad Ansari

Second Advisor

Edip Niver

Third Advisor

Haim Grebel

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.

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