Characterisation of an electrical heating method for metallic-coated optical fibres for distributed sensing applications

In several applications a temperature contrast between the sensing fibre and the environment is required to detect changes in the environmental heat capacity. For this purpose the process of electrical heating in metallic-coated fibres is theoretically analysed and modelled in steady-state conditions based on the thermal energy generated by resistive heating and the losses induced by convection and radiation. The impact of ambient temperature and pressure is investigated. The proposed model for the thermal exchange is experimentally validated using a high-resolution Brillouin distributed fibre sensor, which is used to measure the longitudinal profile of the temperature reached by electrical heating along an Alcoated optical fibre.