PHOSFOS

PHOSFOS (Photonic Skins For Optical Sensing) is a research and technology development project co-funded by the European Commission.

These flexible skins can be wrapped around, embedded in, and anchored to irregularly shaped or moving objects and allow quasi-distributed sensing of mechanical quantities such as deformation, pressure, stress, and strain.

The photonic skins developed by PHOSFOS have potential application in real-time remote monitoring of behavior and integrity of various structures such as in civil engineering (buildings, dams, bridges, roads, tunnels and mines), in aerospace (aircraft wings, helicopter blades), and in energy production (windmill blades).

A summary of the key developments can be found on the PhoSFOS EU webpage and includes the demonstration of a fully flexible opto-electronic foil.

[11] The key areas where significant progress has been made are listed below:[12] The 2nd "Benefits for Industry" Meeting of the EU FP7 Project PHOSFOS will take place on Sunday 22 May 2011 in Munich (Germany).

Figure 1: Flexible skin concept
Figure 2: Photograph of a real flexible skin with embedded sensors made at the Ghent University
Figure 3: Scattering of HeNe laser light from noise gratings recorded in PMMA using a 325 nm HeCd laser