Grant: Engage Plus Grants Program

This Engage Plus project will continue a research ended in a previous Engage project and will have significant applications for potential end-users in the energy and mining sectors, in addition to directly benefiting QPS Photronics Inc. The latter is a Canadian high tech company and a world-class leader of Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) sensor technology and solutions. Under this study is a new technology essential for the safe operation of engineering structures such as the power generators, the mining equipment and the oil and gas pipelines. Typically for down-well and pipeline applications the environment temperatures reach 300°C and above or cycle at -50°C to 125°C extremes. Advanced sensor technologies that can endure harsh working conditions and maintain stable operation for five years are rare but in high demand. Improving the current sensor capacity and reliability will significantly impact the company's R&D and commercialization efforts, helping its businessgrow and enhancing its competitiveness in the global market. QPS has developed an innovative FBG sensor with its sensing grating inscribed using high power, femtosecond pulsed lasers. Compared with conventional ones, the new sensor has proved to have much better thermal stability that endures at least a few hundred hours. No test data and methodology are available to ascertain its longer term durability. The project will first test the degradation behavior of the new QPS sensor for over a thousand and three hundred hours. Based on the test results, a baseline model will be proposed attempting to predict longer term aging and life limits. The results will help explore the feasibility of a new accelerated methodology that eventually will enable the evaluation of the sensor's five year reliability.