A fibre Bragg grating based inclinometer system for ground movement measurement

The measurement of ground movement is an essential part of many geotechnical engineering operations. For decades, inclinometer systems have traditionally been used for this purpose to provide crucial information to engineers and researchers. However, conventional inclinometer systems have their limitations, such as high cost and poor durability. In this paper a fibre optic based inclinometer system is reported, which utilizes fibre Bragg grating sensors attached to the casing of a conventional inclinometer. The characterization of the sensor revealed good agreement with theory and conventional displacement measurements. For a casing of length 2.5 m, the minimum measureable deflection of the top of the casing was found to be 0.48 mm when the FBGs were interrogated with a 1 pm wavelength resolution system.