ABSTRACT
Composite materials have attracted growing interest over the past decades as highperformance construction materials for lightweight applications requiring stiff and strong application under harsh operating conditions. However, their anisotropic nature results in significantly different behavior of the material compared with conventional isotropic construction materials. Health monitoring and strain sensing have received much attention for the safe design and operation of composite structures. Among other techniques, optical fiber sensing has attracted a lot of interest from the research community [1-3]. The fibrous nature and multiaxial sensitivity of optical fiber Bragg gratings make them perfect candidates for embedding purposes in (fibrous) composite materials during the production step [4-9]. Embedded inside the host material during manufacturing, they enable the users to monitor the strain state and development of residual strains during the entire life cycle of the composite structure [10-13]. This significant benefit has resulted in an extensive amount of research being performed on the use of optical fiber sensors in composite materials.
