Development of facilities and methods for the metrological characterization of distributed temperature sensing systems based on optical fibres

Raman distributed temperature sensing (DTS) technologies are currently under evaluation by the nuclear and hydraulic industries as it may bring promising alternatives to classical measurement techniques. The reliability of the DTS measurements, as well as the traceability to the temperature standards, must be ensured throughout the entire period of monitoring (typically over a few tens of years). In order to achieve this goal, one key task consists in the verification of the performances claimed by the DTS devices manufacturers. Thus, the metrological performances and characteristics of the DTS devices, such as their limitations and accuracies, as well as the practical aspects of systems implemented on site should be evaluated step by step. This paper describes the dedicated facilities which have been developed at LNE in order to evaluate and to qualify DTS devices for very demanding applications. A first case study performed on one specific DTS device is detailed. A systematic bias has been observed among others on the spatial resolution. The DTS response to a temperature variation step over 1 m (spatial resolution typically claimed by the manufacturers) of sensing optical fibre corresponds indeed to only 90% of the temperature step magnitude, whereas the full DTS response is obtained in fact for 10 m (the practical spatial resolution) of sensing optical fibre solicited by this temperature step variation.