A method for estimating the generalized modal coordinates of an aircraft during flight has been developed. The Fiber-optic Sensing System (FOSS) offers an eficient and cost-effective method of measuring the strain at thousands of points along the wings. In particular, Optical Frequency-Domain Reflectometry is often used in static structural health monitoring applications thanks to its millimetric spatial. A compact, highly sensitive optical fiber displacement and curvature radius sensor is presented. The device consists of an adiabatic bi-conical fused fiber taper spliced to a single-mode fiber (SMF) segment with a flat face end. The sensor was fabricated by splicing a segment of RCF between two pieces of multimode fiber (MMF) and single-mode fiber (SMF) at the ends. These in-fiber interferometers make use of the sensitive phase variations of waves propagating in fibers to produce intensity variations, resulting in better sensitivities compared to many pure intensity-based sensors.
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