From the static investigations, as shown in Figure 10, it can be seen that the position of the negative peak of BFS distribution, determined by the experiments using arrays of strain gauges as well as FBGs, matched with the value obtained from FE analysis. In case of the use of electric strain gauge arrays, the magnitude of the BFS value at the negative peak seems to be a bit higher than the FE calculated values, while the FBG array showed greater accuracy.
While carrying out the fatigue test, after 150,000 cycles, a 19.8 mm long crack was detected by the monitoring system. From the optical microscope measurement, crack length was found 18.2 mm, thus showing a relatively good agreement between actual crack tip position and the corresponding value obtained by the monitoring system.