Development, Testing, and Validation of Fabry-Pérot Cavity Acoustic Sensors for Microreactor Applications
Nuclear microreactors are a unique reactor design which may allow for the nuclear energy industry to tap into unconventional markets, and their modularity presents some advantages over larger, conventional reactor designs. For nuclear microreactors to be economically viable, on-line structural health monitoring may be necessary to reduce operation and maintenance costs with lower power production. Optical fiber sensors, and specifically optical Fabry-Pérot cavities (FPCs), may present the opportunity to monitor vibrational frequencies of microreactor components during operation, enabling identification of the location and severity of potential damage. In this work, FPCs were designed and fabricated with materials which may be able to survive in the extremely harsh environment of nuclear microreactors. The FPCs were bonded to metal test specimens to monitor their vibrational frequencies, along with a reference piezoelectric accelerometer. Euler-Bernoulli theory was used to calculate the fundamental modes and mode-shapes to compare with experimentally measured frequency spectra. The peak frequencies detected with the FPC and piezoelectric accelerometer, and theoretical modes, all agreed well for the first four fundamental modes (within 5%). Furthermore, when the FPC and accelerometer were co-located on the test specimen, their peak frequencies all agreed within 1%.