Ts. Dr. Muhammad Safwan bin Abdul Aziz and Dr. Ganesan a/l Krisnan have successfully organized a mini-workshop on optical fiber sensors at Laser Center, Ibnu Sina Institute for Scientific and Industrial Research (ISI-SIR), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM).
The workshop was held on 22nd March 2022.
It aimed to provide fundamental theories on optical fibers, their basic handling techniques, and some simple sensing applications.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the workshop was done with a limited number of participants that consisted of 3 undergraduate students, 2 lecturers from Universiti Teknologi MARA, and 1 Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) student.
Limiting the number of people in laboratory activities must be taken into consideration during the pandemic.
There were two main parts in the workshop which were short lectures and demo sessions.
In the first part, Dr. Safwan and Dr. Ganesan, both are affiliated at the Department of Physics and Laser Center ISI-SIR UTM, delivered brief talks about the fundamental theories of optical fiber technologies.
An interactive question and answer session was captured towards the end of their talks.
During the second part, the demo session was presented by Mr. Muhammad Salleh bin Shamsudin and Mr. Abdul Rahman bin Johari.
It started with techniques in handling optical fibers in terms of how to strip, cleave, clean, splice, and protect the optical fibers.
During the demo session, the participants took the opportunity to repeat those steps on their own.
They also learned how to make some simple sensing structures using optical fibers.
Furthermore, a simple application of optical fiber sensors was also demonstrated by measuring the optical spectral changes due to different medium refractive indices.
At the end of the workshop, the participants were delighted because they could learn both theoretical and practical aspects of optical fibers.
“The workshop was important to aid participants with hands-on skills to work with optical fibers”, said Dr. Safwan.
With this workshop, it is hoped that Laser Center can contribute more to the scientific and industrial communities in line with the goal of ISI-SIR, UTM.