Validation of long-term measurements from FBG sensors

Temperature monitoring has been of increased importance in recent years due to the need for temperature measurements in order to compensate other measurement parameters, such as strain, and the increased attention to understanding thermal behaviors of structures in order to assess their performance and condition. To ensure the accuracy of thermal compensation and study of thermal behavior, reliable long-term temperature measurements are required. In this paper, two methods that are aimed at validating long-term temperature measurements are created and their application is presented. The methods differ in the type of data they use for the purpose of validation. The first method relies on the existence of two independent temperature sensors at the same location. Validation is performed by comparing the measurements from the two sensors to one another, and discrepancies between the two data sets indicate malfunction or drift in at least one of the sensors. The second method is applicable to the more general case where only one temperature sensor is available at a given location. The method thus utilizes ambient temperature data from a nearby weather tower to validate measurements from the sensor. The two methods are applied to temperature measurements from FBG sensors installed on Streicker Bridge on the Princeton University campus. The methods successfully identified and characterized malfunction and drift in some of the sensors and confirmed stable measurements in other sensors.