Fiber Optic Piezometers

Kingmach fiber optic piezometers are built around Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) technology. This is not a laboratory curiosity; it has been deployed in thousands of monitoring points worldwide. The sensing element is a short segment of optical fiber with a periodic refractive index pattern. Pressure deflects a diaphragm or squeeze mechanism, which stretches the fiber and shifts the wavelength of reflected light. Since the signal is encoded in wavelength, it is immune to intensity losses from dirt, connector wear, or cable bending. You can chain multiple sensors on a single fiber and query them all from one channel of an optical interrogator. For large dam galleries or long tunnel stretches, this drastically reduces cabling clutter and terminal box count. The transducer itself is made from stainless steel or titanium, with no internal electronics. That simplifies long-term corrosion protection. Many of our sensors have been in service for over a decade with drift under 0.1% full scale per year. Kingmach offers a range of pressure ranges, from a few meters of water column for environmental studies up to 5 MPa for deep foundation work. Every sensor leaves our factory with a calibration sheet.