Fibre Optic Sensors for Geotechnical Applications

主要结构（水坝、桥梁）和民用基础设施（公路、铁路、建筑物）都依赖于颗粒材料：土壤和沉积物，它们覆盖了地球表面的90%。这层物质也是许多自然灾害的来源，如滑坡，沉降和液化。迅速变化的气候条件有能力深刻改变地面和土壤环境和稳定性，增加风险并危及基础设施的安全。例如，全球变暖正在破坏永久冻土胶结的高山斜坡的稳定性，而更密集的冰川导致山体滑坡和建筑物沉降的频率更高。民用基础设施的老化造成了新的问题，因为这些基础设施在极端事件的影响下已经证明是脆弱的，并付出了沉重的财政和人力代价。即使是小规模的事件，例如在暴雨期间因铁路切割故障而导致的列车延误，也会更频繁，成本也很高。在规划、施工和运营期间对土壤状况进行例行监测，可以预测和减轻灾害。这就需要智能监测系统，能够提供有关控制土壤稳定性的重要土壤特性的可靠信息，以及能够对潜在故障进行早期预警的警报系统。在这个项目中，我们将使用光纤形成传感器网络，测量土壤和颗粒材料的许多特性，这将允许评估其稳定性，指出提高稳定性的方法，并提供潜在问题的早期预警。该项目将需要来自许多不同科学和工程领域的投入，以使这些传感器足够坚固，能够在恶劣的环境中使用。

Major structures (dam, bridges) and civil infrastructure (roads, railways, buildings) rest on granular materials: soils and sediments, that cover 90% of the Earth's surface. This layer of material is also the source of many natural hazards such as landslides, subsidence, and liquefaction. Rapidly changing climatic conditions have the capacity to alter profoundly ground and soil settings and stability, increasing risk and endangering safety of the infrastructure. For example, global warming is destabilising permafrost-cemented alpine slopes and denser rainfalls have led to greater frequency of landslides and building subsidence. The aging of the civil infrastructure creates new problems, as they have proved frail to the impact of extreme events, with heavy financial and human costs. Even small scale events such as train delays resulting from the failure of railway cuttings during intense rainstorms are more frequent and very costly.The routine monitoring of soil conditions during planning, construction and operation allows the anticipation and mitigation of hazards. This requires intelligent monitoring systems that can deliver reliable information about important soil properties that control soil stability, coupled with alarm systems capable of giving early warning of potential failure. In this project we will use optical fibres to form networks of sensors that measure many properties of soils and granular materials, that will allow an assessment of their stability, point to ways of improving stability, and provide early warning of potential problems. The porject wioll require input from many different areas of science and engineering to make these sensors robust enough to survive the harsh environments in which they will be used.