Blast-pressure measurement with a high-bandwidth fibre optic pressure sensor

Abstract

A sensor to measure rapidly changing pressures in an explosive air blast requires high bandwidth and high spatial resolution. For such an application a low-cost, electrically isolated sensor is particularly attractive. We describe an optical fibre-based pressure sensor that meets these requirements. The sensor is subjected to an experimental explosive-blast measurement test and the results are discussed with respect to the sensor performance and compared with a simple blast-wave model and conventional pressure transducers.