Characteristics of a practical optical fiber reflective sensor

This paper describes tile evaluation of a fiberoptic reflective displacemen t sensor that is compensated for variations in light source intensity, pres sure, temperature and opacity of ambient medium. Additionally, the distance information is averaged over several points on the target surface, which r educes signal fluctuations due to inhomogeneities. Furthermore, a practical optical fiber reflective sensor model of measuring oil film thickness for thrust bearing is set up in this paper. Actual measurements were made with HEC 3000 tons' thrust bearing and the results were in good agreement with t heoretical calculations. Ley words: optical fiber reflective sensor, thrust bearing, measurement of oil-film thickness.