Methods Of Prolonging The Service Life Of Fiber Optic Cables

First, when the fatigue parameter n is constant, the fiber life ts is only related to the stress σ, so reducing the stress on the fiber is a way to improve the fiber life. When people manufacture an optical fiber, a compressive stress is formed on the surface of the optical fiber to resist the tensile stress received, so that the tensile stress is reduced to the minimum extent possible, and the compressive stress cladding technology is produced to manufacture the optical fiber.

If the stress on the fiber is σa and the life is t1, when the fiber has a compressive stress σR cladding, the life of the fiber is t2: t2= t1[(σa-σR)/σa]-n, where (σa- σR) is the actual net stress experienced by the fiber. This shows that the fiber with compressive stress cladding is much longer than the ordinary fiber. In recent years, some people use GeO2-doped silica as the compression layer on the surface of the fiber, and some people use TiO2-doped silica as the outer layer of the fiber to increase the tensile strength of the fiber itself from 50kpsi to 130kpsi (the equivalent tensile strength is increased from 430g to 1100g), It also increases the static fatigue parameters of the optical fiber from n=20～25 to n=130.

Second, improve the static fatigue parameter n of the optical fiber to improve the service life of the optical fiber. Therefore, when manufacturing optical fibers, people try to isolate the quartz fiber itself from the atmospheric environment, so that it is not affected by the atmospheric environment, and try to change the n value from the environmental material parameters to the parameters of the optical fiber material itself, so that the The value of n becomes very large, resulting in the "sealing coating technology" on the surface of the optical fiber.