Reconstruction of temperature and displacement fields in satellite sandwich panels based on integrated fiber optic sensors

Large satellites are equipped with hundreds of sensors for temperature measurement. The large amount of sensors is expensive in terms of integration effort and mass in the case conventional sensors are used. In this article an integrated fiber optic temperature sensor network for the hot spot detection on satellite sandwich panels is introduced. The developed sensor system is integrated with only negligible mechanical impact. It is electro-magnetic immune and decoupled from mechanical loads. In addition to monitoring hotspots, the number and aerial density allows a reliable reconstruction of temperature and displacement fields.