TY - JOUR AB - Purpose The spatial resolution of seepage monitoring methods based on fiber Bragg grating (FBG) temperature sensing technology is limited by the distance between measurement points. Improving the spatial resolution for a given number of measurement points is a prerequisite for popularizing this technology in the seepage monitoring of rockfill dams. The purpose of this paper is to address this problem.Design/methodology/approach This paper proposes a mobile-distributed seepage monitoring method based on the FBG-hydrothermal cycling seepage monitoring system. In this method, the positions of the measurement points are changed by freely dragging the FBG sensing cluster within the inner tube of a dual-tube structure, consisting of an inner polytetrafluoroethylene tube and outer polyethylene of raised temperature resistance heating tube.Findings A seepage velocity calibration test was carried out using the improved monitoring system. The results showed that under a constant seepage velocity, the use of the dual-tube structure enables faster cooling, and the cooling rate accelerates with an increase in the diameter of the inner tube. The use of the dual-tube structure can improve the sensitivity of the seepage evaluation index ζv to the seepage velocity. When the inner diameter increases, ζv becomes more sensitive to the seepage velocity.Originality/value A mobile-distributed seepage monitoring method based on FBG sensing technology is proposed in which the FBG sensors are not fixed. Instead, the positions of the measurement points are changed to improve the spatial resolution. Meanwhile, the use of the dual-tube structure in the presented monitoring system can improve its sensitivity. VL - 38 IS - 3 SN - 0260-2288 DO - 10.1108/SR-06-2017-0112 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/SR-06-2017-0112 AU - Chen Jiang AU - Zheng Junli AU - Xiong Feng PY - 2018 Y1 - 2018/01/01 TI - Mobile-distributed seepage monitoring method based on fiber Bragg grating sensing technology T2 - Sensor Review PB - Emerald Publishing Limited SP - 345 EP - 352 Y2 - 2024/04/25 ER -