AbstractMaintenance of wind turbine towers is currently a manual process that requires visual inspection and bolt tightening yearly. This process is costly to energy companies and its necessity is not well-defined. In this study, two Rayleigh-based distributed fiber optic sensing technologies are evaluated and compared for their ability to monitor the dynamic structural behavior of a model wind turbine tower subject to free and forced vibration. They are further tested for their ability to detect structural phenomena associated with loose bolts and material damage within the tower. The two technologies examined are optical frequency domain reflectometry (OFDR) and phase-based optical time domain reflectometry ($$\phi$$ ϕ -OTDR), which is a technology used in distributed acoustic sensing (DAS). OFDR is a tested and proven strain measurement technology commonly used for structural health monitoring but can only make strain measurements over short distances (10 s of meters). OFDR was used to validate the measurements made with $$\phi$$ ϕ -OTDR which can measure over much longer distances (several kilometers). Due to its sensing distance capability, $$\phi$$ ϕ -OTDR is a promising technology for monitoring many wind turbines networked together with a single fiber optic cable. This study presents a first-of-its-kind use of $$\phi$$ ϕ -OTDR for structural health monitoring to demonstrate its capabilities.