Fibre Bragg Grating sensor for shock wave diagnostics

We measured the response of short FBGs to a weak planar shock wave. The combined effect of the Photo-Elastic effect and the FBG strain was estimated theoretically depending on its orientation with respect to shock front (for 1550 nm FBG, parallel: 0.9 nm/kbar, perpendicular: -1.4 nm/kbar). The experimental results imply that the FBG/fibre survives for more than 1 μs at 5 kbar shock stress, and that our assumptions about the FBG behaviour under dynamic loading are valid, though more work is needed to fully quantify the effect.