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