Abstract:To address the significant impact of end-face tilt on the measurement accuracy of fiber-optic blade tip clearance sensors, this study presents an enhanced multifiber bundle sensor with improved tilt insensitivity, based on the structure of a dual-ring coaxial fiber-optic sensor. The key innovation involves dividing the six receiving fibers in the inner ring of the dual-ring coaxial probe into two symmetrically distributed receiving fiber bundles. This modification introduces a second independent output characteristic parameter, the ratio of light intensities R2 between the two inner-ring bundles, supplementing the traditional single output parameter R1, which is the ratio of light intensities between the outer and inner rings. Optical simulations with the software Zemax were conducted to verify the relationships between the two enhanced output characteristic parameters (R1, R2), the end-face tilt angle β, and the blade tip clearance z. A dual-parameter decoupling model was subsequently developed to simultaneously invert both the clearance z and tilt angle β based on the measured output parameters. The results demonstrate that when β varies within 0°~10°, the calculated blade tip clearance derived from decoupling the sensor′s output parameters exhibits an error of less than 3% over the measurement range of 1.0~2.5 mm, confirming the reliability and measurement accuracy of the enhanced fiber-optic sensor under complex operating conditions.