Ohodnicki, McHenry, Leary and two others issued US patent
Alumni Paul Ohodnick, Alex Leary, and MSE Professor Michael McHenry, along with team members Richard Beddingfield of Raleigh, North Carolina and Michael Buric, of Morgantown, West Virginia, have been issued a patent for a fiber-optics sensor.
US Patent #US 2019-0072437-A
Distributed Sensing of Electromagnetic Components Using Optical Fiber Based Methods
ABSTRACT
An OFDR based fiber-optics sensor for distributed real-time temperature rise monitoring of a transformer in operation has been disclosed. The fiber-optic sensor provides an effective solution to monitoring the physical structures of the transformer core, as well as accurately detecting the nonuniform temperature distribution inside the transformer, and thus provides innovative feedback to the transformer design by minimizing the core losses. Additionally, the method may be responsive to the presence of magnetic and electric fields, as well as responsive to various chemical species. The method allows novel approaches to real-time asset monitoring of power transformers while operational.