Chen Tong, Wang Qingqing, Chen Rongzhang, Zhang Botao, Lin Yuankun, Chen Kevin P
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15261, USA.
Appl Opt. 2012 Sep 10;51(26):6282-9. doi: 10.1364/AO.51.006282.
We present a continuous liquid level sensing system for both room temperature and cryogenic fluids with millimeter spatial resolution. Change of in-fiber Rayleigh backscattering signal from the distinct thermal response of the heated sensing fiber in liquid and in air were interrogated and spatially resolved using the optical frequency domain reflectometry. Both electrical and optical heating techniques were investigated for cryogenic liquid applications at 4 K, 77 K, and the room temperature. The successful combination of self-heated fiber and wavelength-swept Rayleigh scattering interferometry provides, for the first time to our best knowledge, a truly distributed fuel gauge with high spatial resolution for cryogenic fuel storage, transportation, and management on ground and in space.
我们展示了一种用于室温及低温流体的连续液位传感系统，其具有毫米级的空间分辨率。利用光频域反射法对液体和空气中加热传感光纤的不同热响应所产生的光纤内瑞利背向散射信号变化进行探测和空间分辨。针对4K、77K的低温液体应用以及室温环境，研究了电加热和光加热技术。据我们所知，自热光纤与波长扫描瑞利散射干涉测量法的成功结合首次为低温燃料在地面和空间的储存、运输及管理提供了一种具有高空间分辨率的真正分布式燃料测量仪。
