Optical Fiber Technology 12 (2006) 305–311

www.elsevier.com/locate/yofte

Detection of buckling in steel pipeline and column by the distributed

Brillouin sensor
Fabien Ravet a,∗ , Lufan Zou a , Xiaoyi Bao a , Liang Chen a , Rong Feng Huang b , Heng Aik Khoo b
a Fiber Optic Group, University of Ottawa, 150 Louis-Pasteur, Ottawa, ON K1N 6N5, Canada
b Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON K1S 5B6, Canada

Received 20 July 2005; revised 2 November 2005

Available online 18 January 2006

Abstract
We conducted a strain characterization experiment to monitor steel pipe and column buckling for the first time using a distributed Brillouin
sensor system. Two specimens (steel pipe and column) were prepared by locally thinning the inner wall to initiate buckling. An axial load was
applied to the specimens and increased while compressive strain was measured by both Brillouin sensor and strain gauges. With the Brillouin
sensor, we observed compression on the whole specimens while elongation was detected in the neighborhood of the thinned wall at onset of the
buckling. Both tension and compression are measured simultaneously from the same spectrum. This capability to extract both informations at
the same time makes the Brillouin sensor a unique tool for structural health monitoring. The buckling was identified and localized thanks to this
original approach.
© 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Distributed Brillouin sensor; Strain sensor; Structural health monitoring

1. Introduction Strain monitoring of steel structures with the Brillouin sen-

In the past decade, the demand for safe infrastructure and
power supply has dramatically increased in our society. The
pressure on civil engineering, oil and utility industries has
grown similarly. Our society requires not only a growth in the
supply of the services but also improvement of the safety on
the supplying chain. These requirements turn structural health
monitoring (SHM) into a key element of these industrial busi-
nesses. Current techniques used for SHM are localized devices
giving only partial information on the stresses that affect the
monitored structure. The disaster prevention requires global
picture of civil engineering structures for stress integrity as-
sessment. Clearly there is a need for a technique that allows
distributed temperature and strain measurements in real time
over lengths of a few meters to tenths of kilometers. The dis-
tributed Brillouin sensor (DBS) technique has the advantage to
combine all these characteristics [1–5].
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: fabien.ravet@science.uottawa.ca (F. Ravet).
1068-5200/$ – see front matter © 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.yofte.2005.12.002
sor has been reported in lab condition [6] (constant tempera-
ture) and field with temperature compensation [7]. These stud-
ies are of great interest. In fact, on the one hand the environmen-
tal effects can degrade the pipeline structure [8,9] when operat-
ing temperatures and pressures for sub-sea oil and gas pipelines
have dramatically increased. On the other hand, the technology
evolves to the use of larger diameter pipes. The combination
of these two elements has increased the probability for pipes to
buckle. This has increased the possibility for pipes to buckle.
Buried land and offshore pipelines commonly suffer upheaval
buckling where the pipe extricated vertically from protective
trench, especially in northern regions where permafrost is en-
countered. Another mode of failure is for the pipe wall to buckle
locally. Such environmental condition varies periodically in-
ducing excessive stresses to the pipeline. It ultimately generates
buckling by combined effect of large temperature and pressure
changes. Therefore pipeline integrity is threatened and must be
monitored to prevent any leakage that can lead to costly situa-
tions: the energy supply chain is broken and affects services, the
environment needs to be cleaned, and the image of the industry
is damaged.
306 F. Ravet et al. / Optical Fiber Technology 12 (2006) 305–311
This work is the first detailed strain analysis for a pipe under
axial load using distributed Brillouin sensor system on pipeline
buckling process. The preliminary results of this study were
published in Photonics North [10]. The present paper expands
the experimental content and develops the methodology of the
Brillouin spectra analysis. The novelty of this approach is that
we can measure both compression and tension simultaneously
using the same Brillouin spectrum, while other methods can
only measure the compression, because the process is compres-
sion dominated. The importance of measuring tension is to pre-
dict the buckling location and starting of the buckling. Once we
can find the buckling forming process, we can predict the po-
tential problem and give the warning sign which is very unique.
Brillouin scattering based distributed sensor is the only method
to provide compression and tension simultaneously within the
gauge length.
2. Brillouin sensor system
The sensing medium of the DBS is a standard single-mode
fiber. Two laser beams are injected into this fiber in a counter-
propagating configuration. An interaction between the two
beams happens when the frequency difference of the two lasers
matches the frequency of the longitudinal acoustic phonons of
the optical fiber. There is then a transfer of energy from the high
frequency beam (pump) to the low frequency beam (probe). The
amount of loss of the pump is recorded at one end of the fiber as
a function of the frequency difference in the form of Brillouin
spectrum. The maximum loss occurs at the Brillouin frequency
(νB ), which is the phonon frequency. The distributed nature of
our sensor is achieved by intensity modulating the probe beam.
An electro-optic modulator creates an optical pulse whose dura-
tion is τ . The pulse propagates through the fiber and interacts
with the pump. The pump power (and then the Brillouin loss)
variation with time is measured by a photodiode at the pulse
input, giving a waveform that can be converted into a spa-
tial profile. An experimental spectrum measured in the present
trial is shown in Fig. 1 for pulses of τ = 1.5 ns. It has been
taken from an unstressed part of the fiber to provide a reference.
Fig. 1. Brillouin spectrum measured on an unstressed part of the fiber. Peak is
found to be 12,792.56 MHz and the FWHM is 48.09 MHz. Curve fitting algo-
rithm (Levenberg–Marquardt) is used to determine these values (R = 0.9954)
by applying a Lorentzian profile fit.
Two parameters are extracted from this spectrum by Lorentzian
curve fitting: the Brillouin frequency (νB ) and the relative peak
power (RPP). In the case of spectrum composed of multiple
peaks, the various peak frequencies are extracted by fitting as
many Lorentzian as the number of peak. Spectrum of Fig. 1
also reveals a unique feature of our DBS. Common distrib-
uted Brillouin sensors are limited in frequency resolution when
τ  τB , where τB is the acoustic phonon lifetime due to spec-
tral broadening. In our sensor, the broadening effect is mitigated
by coherent probe(pulse)-pump(continuous wave-CW) interac-
tion [11]. The pulse always has a residual dc component due to
electro-optic modulator imperfection and obviously a finite ex-
tinction ratio (ER). This dc component interacts with the pump
giving two contributions to the loss spectrum: (1) the interaction
of the dc component present in the dark part of the pulse with
the pump gives a spectrum characteristic of the whole fiber;
(2) the interaction of the dc component in the bright part of the
pulse with the pump gives a spectrum characteristic of local
stress as does the pulse interaction with the pump. That last dc
component and pulse have same frequency and phase leading
them to interact coherently with the pump. Eventually, Brillouin
loss signal is enhanced and narrower than the signal that would
be produced by the pulse-pump interaction only (infinite ER
case). In our experiment we used an extinction ratio of 15 dB
which keeps the Brillouin loss spectrum linewidth within a few
percent of the Brillouin gain natural linewidth. In these condi-
tions, our DBS can record the Brillouin loss curve at different
location along the fiber and measure νB accurately. The spatial
resolution (w) is determined by the pulse width (τ ) with rela-
tion of w = vg τ/2, where vg is the pulse group velocity in the
optical fiber. The factor 1/2 comes from the backscattered na-
ture of the detected signal. It accounts for the round trip of the
pulse in the fiber [12]. Measurements are taken every 5 cm. The
spatial resolution w may have the following consequence: if the
defect size is smaller than w, the measured strain in this condi-
tion may be underestimated [6,13,14]. In the present study, we
used 1.5 ns pulses giving a spatial resolution of 15 cm.
The Brillouin frequency changes linearly with temperature
and strain [1–5]. The relationship between the Brillouin fre-
quency variation and strain when temperature remains un-
changed is ε = (νB − ν0B )/Cε , where ε is the tensile strain, νB
is the Brillouin frequency shift when the fiber is strained, ν0B is
the Brillouin frequency shift of the unstrained fiber, and Cε is
the strain proportionality coefficient [1,3–5]. The fiber used in
the experiment is an acrylate buffered SMF-28 whose Brillouin
characteristics are ν0B = 12,793 MHz and Cε = 0.06 MHz/µε.
The frequency step for the Brillouin spectrum measurement is
4 MHz and the frequency range is 500–800 MHz wide starting
at 12,500 MHz.
Field implementation requires that the temperature influence
on strain measurement must be compensated. Various strategies
can be used involving the simultaneous monitoring of strain
and temperature with the DBS. The simplest consist in laying
out an adjacent stress free fiber [15] or in gluing the jacket of
a loose tube optical fiber cable. In that last case, all mechani-
cal changes of the structure will only affect the cable while the
fiber remains unstressed. It is also possible to measure simul-
 F. Ravet et al. / Optical Fiber Technology 12 (2006) 305–311
taneously strain and temperature with a single fiber. Sensing
can then be achieved by monitoring Brillouin frequency shift
and Brillouin peak power [16]. Another method using a single
fiber has been proposed [17]. This technique is based on the de-
tection of stokes, anti-stokes, and Rayleigh peak intensities in
conjunction with the measurement of the Brillouin frequency
shift.
3. Experiment description
Two steel specimens of 1 m are tested with square end caps
(20 cm side length). The first specimen has a cylinder shape
with a diameter of 18 cm. The second specimen is a W150 ×
22 I-shape column that has both width and depth of 15 cm. The
location of buckling is controlled by thinning a small area of
specimen inner walls at the mid-length, which induces weak-
ness in the structure for buckling to occur at this region when
an axial load is applied.
The specimens are instrumented with strain gauges and dis-
tributed Brillouin sensor. Figures 2 and 3 show the location of
the fibers and strain gauges. The fiber is looped 8 times on the
pipeline and 4 times on the columns with 1 m loose fiber sep-
arations. The specimen preparation is similar to the procedure
followed in Ref. [6]. The strain gauges are distributed symmet-
rically about the mid-length of the specimen.
Fig. 2. Pipeline specimen configuration and sensors layout.
Fig. 3. Square column specimen configuration and sensors layout.
307
Each specimen is placed on the test bench. The specimen
is progressively compressed while the deformation is continu-
ously monitored with the strain gauges and distributed sensor.
The experiment is finished when the buckling happens, which
is a very fast phenomenon when the steel starts to yield. In the
case of the pipe, the buckling can be visually observed as illus-
trated in Fig. 4.
4. Measurement results and analysis
The pipeline is subjected to a gradual load increase from
0 to 730 kN. The buckling happened after 730 kN and the
fiber was broken due to the small bending radius and rigid glue
(Fig. 4). Two load levels (350 and 700 kN) were kept constant
for less than 15 min in order to capture the Brillouin spectra
distributions along the fiber. Figure 5 represents the Brillouin
loss spectra measured in section c. The three curves show the
effect of the load increase: without load the Brillouin peak lo-
cated at 12,805 MHz is higher than the loose fiber Brillouin
frequency. That is induced by the combination of small stress
during the fiber installation and the drying of the glue. The peak
frequency at 350 kN configuration is downshifted from 12,805
to 12,760 MHz corresponding to −548 µε. The peak frequency
Fig. 4. Buckling of the pipeline. The deformation was obviously identified after
the load was increased over 700 kN.
Fig. 5. Brillouin loss spectra for three distinct loads measured at 350 mm from
the beginning of glued section c, which is a located in the middle of the glued
fiber section. The main peak is downshifted in frequency indicating that the
pipeline is compressed.
308 F. Ravet et al. / Optical Fiber Technology 12 (2006) 305–311
Fig. 6. Pipeline strain profiles obtained by Brillouin sensor and strain gauges
measurement for the 350 kN load applied. Labels a, b, c, d, and e report the
measurements obtained with the Brillouin sensor on fibers a, b, c, d, and e.
Fig. 7. Pipeline strain profiles obtained by Brillouin sensor and strain gauges
measurement for the 700 kN load applied. Labels a, b, c, d, and e report the
measurements obtained with the Brillouin sensor on fibers a, b, c, d, and e.
is further reduced when 700 kN is reached giving compression
of −1390 µε. The axial load to the structure causes this com-
pression.
Pipe compression is confirmed by strain gauge, and com-
parison between strain gauge and the Brillouin sensor mea-
surements shown in Figs. 6 and 7 for various strips along the
pipeline at 350 and 700 kN. Strain gauge readings and Bril-
louin sensor measurements appear to lie in the same strain range
for a given load. Moreover the results indicate consistent be-
havior for a load increase from 350 to 700 kN. Curves a, b,
c, and d show that the strain reading from distributed sensor
is smaller than strain gauge reading, because the distributed
sensor measures the average strain over 15 cm (pulse length),
while the strain gauge measured localized strain over 1 cm. Due
to non-uniform strain distribution as shown in Fig. 5 for the
spectrum at load 350 and 700 kN, the spectrum is asymmet-
ric and is broader than the unstressed Brillouin spectrum. The
fitted central peak position is the convolution of all the differ-
ent strains. The plotted strain is the averaged strain. The strain
gauge reading corresponds only to one of the Brillouin spec-
Fig. 8. Spectra measured at 800 mm on fiber sections c, d, and e. Compression
dominates in the three spectra. Tension can be detected in spectrum e because
of an additional peak at 12,850 MHz. Another peak can be observed around
12,800 MHz due to the loose fiber.
Fig. 9. Brillouin loss spectra measured at the end of the glued fiber section c.
700 kN case has three peaks: Left (broad) and middle peaks characterize com-
pression and loose fiber (unstrained contribution) with the same heights, while
the right peak is the tension.
trum at a specific location. Figures 5, 8, and 9 represent the
influence of strain gradient on the measured Brillouin spectrum.
Another interesting feature we observed in Fig. 7 is the mate-
rial non-uniformity along the hoop direction. Here curves e and
d represent increased and decreased compression in the region
600 and 800 mm, while curves a, b, and c have a uniform strain.
The maximum compression is measured at 800 mm. Figure 8
represents the spectra of positions c, d, and e (hoop direction
alone): a large compression dominates the strain behavior in
spectrum e but at the same time a second peak at 12,850 MHz
suggests an elongation. Spectrum d shows minimum compres-
sion. Spectrum c is typical of middle level compression which
remains constant along both longitudinal and hoop directions
(Fig. 7, curves a, b, and c). Apparently this process is not due to
wall thinning as the location is different, rather than by material
non-uniformity enhanced by heavy loading.
In the transition region between loose and glued fiber sec-
tions, spatial resolution covers loose and stressed fibers. It then
leads to a spectrum composed of two and three peaks as il-
lustrated by Fig. 9. One peak corresponds to the loose fiber
 F. Ravet et al. / Optical Fiber Technology 12 (2006) 305–311
Fig. 10. Strain profiles along fiber sections a, b, and c extracted from Brillouin
sensor measurements. The arrows show the extension of the glued fiber sec-
tions. 700 kN (curves with squares and diamonds) and unloaded case (plain
curve) are reported. In spectrum measured on the glued fiber, we observed two
peaks simultaneously, one associated with tension (Peak 1, square), the other
associated with compression (Peak 2, diamond).
Fig. 11. Strain profiles along fiber sections a, b, and c extracted from Brillouin
sensor measurements. The arrows show the extension of the glued fiber sec-
tions. 700 kN (diamond), 350 kN (square), and unloaded (plain curve) cases are
reported. These curves show that the tension (Peak 1) increases locally when
the load is increased. Compression (Peak 2) is not shown but behaves similarly
to the results presented in Fig. 10.
frequency peak while the other one is due to the load-induced
strain. Both compressive and loose peaks have the same height,
and the third peak represents tension at 700 kN, which means
that half of the pulse covers the strained section while the other
half extends into the unstrained part of the fiber [14]. This lo-
cates the transition from loose to glued fiber, which can be used
as a marker for default localization and strain profiling. Once
a larger part of the pulse covers the strained section, the load
induced peak power is higher than the unstrained peak. The de-
tection of the transition region is improved by 5 cm sampling
period.
As mentioned in a previous paragraph, compression is not
the only effect we detected with the Brillouin sensor. In fact,
we noticed the presence of a second peak, which has lower RPP
meaning that it comes from a strained section within the pulse
width shorter than the major contribution, due to compression.
Resulting strain profiles in Figs. 10 and 11 show the variations
of these peaks. More specifically, these figures represent re-
309
Fig. 12. Brillouin loss spectra for three positions along the sensing fiber for
a load of 700 kN. A and C spectra correspond the loose fiber section. Spec-
trum B is in the middle of the stressed section c where pulse covers buckling.
In spectrum B, two peaks are observed. The left peak (Peak 2) characterizes
compression while right peak (Peak 1) is the elongation contribution.
spectively three glued sections strain profiles. The load levels
are 350 and 700 kN corresponding to the condition preceding
the pipeline buckling as shown in Fig. 4. Peak 2 is associated
with the compression (negative strain). As it appears in Fig. 12
(spectrum B), the left peak (Peak 2) is bigger indicating that
compression process is the major event for the pipe. Peak 1
(right peak) represents elongation (positive strain). Elongation
increases as the applied load is raised as shown by the strain
profiles in Fig. 11, and the increasing amount of elongation is
not the same over the pipe, which indicates the non-uniform
stress on the pipe. This may be due to the fact that the thinning
of the inner wall is not perfectly uniform. So the buckling hap-
pened in sections a and b first, and finally spread to section c.
The interesting feature in Fig. 12 is that Peak 1 curve matches
the unloaded curve value outside the stressed section but it be-
comes larger than the unloaded strain value in the middle of
the stressed section (respectively near the center of sections a,
b, and c). Peak 1 RPP drops to 30% of the maximum spectrum
amplitude indicating that the elongated length is very short. Ob-
viously it is a very localized tension. We interpret such behavior
as a signature of the buckling; the distributed strain suggests
that it lies in the thinned wall region. The whole pipeline suf-
fers compression but a tiny part, axially distributed, must be
extruded to elongate locally. At that stage of the experiment, the
deformation is still too small to be seen visually, but can be felt
by pressing the hand on the surface. An inspection of Fig. 12
confirms this point. This figure shows three Brillouin loss spec-
tra around the stressed section. Spectra A and C are associated
with the loose fiber section with one peak at 12,800 MHz. Note
that the Brillouin frequency shift measured here is higher by
8 MHz when it is compared to the reference measurement of
Fig. 1. We attribute this shift to residual stresses induced by the
fiber lay out between two glued sections because the fiber is
taped and bent. Brillouin spectrum B has two peaks: (1) com-
pression (high loss) and (2) elongation (low loss).
A similar experiment has been conducted on a steel beam.
Load has been increased from 0 to 890 kN. Figure 13 represents
310 F. Ravet et al. / Optical Fiber Technology 12 (2006) 305–311
Fig. 13. Column strain profiles obtained by Brillouin sensor and strain gauges
measurement for four load levels (0, 780, 790, and 890 kN).
the comparison between the strain gauge and the Brillouin sen-
sor measurements at four loads. The fiber is glued on the side
of the beam where the strain gauges are located. Similarly to
the pipeline, the compression by strain gauge reading is larger
than the distributed sensor system due to the spatial resolution
averaging effect and signal-processing procedure as explained
previously. They show that compression follows the load in-
crease and experiences a dip in the profile. The location from
the distributed sensor suggests that the dip position corresponds
to the thinned part of the wall. The dip deepening is getting un-
ambiguous at a load of 780 kN. The presence of the dip in the
strain profile is an indication of the large compression in the re-
gion, where the buckling will arise. It reveals the presence of
structural weakness. At this point no elongation was observed.
The absence of Peak 2 can be explained by the fact that mea-
sured noise level was higher in the column experiment than that
in the pipeline experiment due to the high loss induced by fiber
installation process, which makes small signal detection diffi-
cult.
This test has been conducted in a laboratory environment,
limiting the maximum load that could be applied to the pipeline.
Actually buckling happens for much larger loads and over
longer time scales (up to months). These are the reasons why we
weakened the samples locally to accelerate buckling. Weaken-
ing the pipe has an important drawback because at that location
the pipeline suffers a strain gradient larger than that of an un-
weakened structure. Strain measurement is then more difficult
due to broadening and/or the presence of multiple peaks in the
spectrum. To accommodate these problems, we introduced mul-
tiple peaks fitting method [14]. We were then able to handle
simultaneous compression and tension cases. That approach is
a significant change from the technique applied in our other
field tests where we used area fitting method [6,7,18]. Area-
fitting method can only give an average strain and is not capable
to measure both compression and tension, as it is required for
pipeline buckling detection. In such application, it is very im-
portant to identify the elongation which is the starting step of
the buckling. The measurement of an elongation in the com-
pression process must be considered as a warning flag.
5. Conclusions
Buckling in a pipe and a column has been detected and moni-
tored successfully by the distributed Brillouin sensor system for
the first time. The two specimens were prepared by locally thin-
ning the inner wall, which represents weakness to the pipe and
induced buckling under the load. All the measurements showed
a progressive increasing compression for the two specimens
as the load is raised. The analysis of Brillouin spectra in the
hoop direction demonstrated the localized non-uniform strains
induced by material non-uniformity under heavy load. The Bril-
louin sensor can detect special buckling feature: a small peak in
the spectrum corresponds to the elongation of a short length el-
ement in the neighborhood of the thinned wall. The buckling
process and location can be detected before it is visible. This is
very important for warning of buckling and prevention of costly
disaster to the environment.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Intelligent Sensing for Innovative Struc-
tures, Canada, Natural Science and Engineering Research
Council, Canada, and Canadian Foundation for Innovation for
financial support. The discussions with Saeed Hadjifaradji, and
Shahraam Afshar were of great help and much appreciated.
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