Vulnerability of OFDR-based distributed sensors to high γ-ray doses

Serena Rizzolo (1) , Aziz Boukenter (1) , Emmanuel Marin (1) , Marco Cannas (2) , Jocelyn Perisse (3) , Sophie Bauer , Jean-Reynald Macé (3) , Youcef Ouerdane (1) , Sylvain Girard (1)

1 LHC - Laboratoire Hubert Curien [Saint Etienne]
2 Università degli studi di Palermo - University of Palermo
3 AREVA NP

Vulnerability of Optical Frequency Domain Reflectometry (OFDR) based sensors to high γ-ray doses (up to 10 MGy) is evaluated with a specific issue of a radiation-hardened temperature and strain monitoring system for nuclear industry. For this, we characterize the main radiation effects that are expected to degrade the sensor performances in such applicative domain: the radiation-induced attenuation (RIA), the possible evolution with the dose of the Rayleigh scattering phenomenon as well as its dependence on temperature and strain. This preliminary investigation is done after the irradiation and for five different optical fiber types covering the range from radiation-hardened fibers to highly radiation sensitive ones. Our results show that at these high dose levels the scattering mechanism at the basis of the used technique for the monitoring is unaffected (changes below 5%), authorizing acceptable precision on the

Keywords: Scattering Rayleigh; Fiber optics sensors; Radiation

Domains: Engineering Sciences [physics]; Electronics

Serena Rizzolo, Aziz Boukenter, Emmanuel Marin, Marco Cannas, Jocelyn Perisse, et al.. Vulnerability of OFDR-based distributed sensors to high γ-ray doses. Optics Express, 2015, 23 (15), pp.18997-19009. ⟨10.1364/OE.23.018997⟩. ⟨ujm-01185797⟩