Engineering Photonics: Sensor and Instrumentation Development and Application

A Scottish Aviation Bulldog aircraft will carry experimental optical sensors into the sky to test new ways of measuring airflow, temperature, and gas concentrations during flight. This research tackles a practical bottleneck: many advanced sensors that work in the lab fail in real-world conditions—on a moving wing, inside a curing composite panel, or at a patient’s bedside. The team at Cranfield develops photonic sensors—devices that use light rather than electricity to detect changes in pressure, chemical composition, or structural strain—and then builds them into working instruments. The aircraft flight tests, along with work on gas sensing, composite monitoring, and point-of-care diagnostics, all aim to close the gap between a laboratory prototype and a deployable tool. If successful, these sensors could improve how engineers monitor aircraft structures for damage, how manufacturers detect defects in composite materials as they harden, and how clinicians perform rapid diagnostic tests without sending samples to a lab. The research also explores nano-structured films on optical fibres, which could lead to more sensitive chemical detectors for environmental monitoring or industrial process control. The project is applied by design—each strand targets a specific measurement challenge in aerospace, energy, manufacturing, or healthcare.