• 한국전산유체공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2011.05a
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• pp.88-91
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• 2011

Glass fiber drawing from a silica preform is one of the most important processes in optical fiber manufacturing. High purify silica preform of cylindrical shape is fed into the graphite furnace, and then a very thin glass fiber of 125 micron diameter is drawn from the softened and heated preform. A computational analysis is performed to investigate the heat transfer characteristics of preform heating and the glass fiber drawing in the furnace. In addition to the dominant radiative heating of preform by the heating element in the furnace, present analysis also includes the convective heat transport by the gas flowing around the preform that experiences neck-dawn profile and the freshly drawn glass fiber at high fiber drawing speed. The computational results present the effects of gas flow on the temperature of preform and glass fiber as well as the neck-down profile of preform.

• 한국전산유체공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2011.05a
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• pp.92-95
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• 2011

In manufacturing optical fibers, the process starts with the glass fiber drawing from the heated and softened silica preform in the furnace, and the freshly drawn glass fiber is still at high temperature when it leaves the glass fiber drawing furnace. It is necessary to cool down the glass fiber to the ambient temperature before it then enters the fiber coating applicator, since the hot glass fiber is known to cause several technical difficulties in achieving high quality fiber coating. As the fiber drawing speed keeps increasing, a current manufacturing of optical fibers requires a dedicated cooling unit with helium gas injection. A series of three-dimensional flow and heat transfer computations are carried out to investigate the effectiveness of fiber cooling in the fiber cooling unit. The glass fiber cooling unit is simplified into the long cylindrical enclosure at which the hot glass fiber passes through at high speed, and the helium is being supplied through several injection slots of rectangular shape along the cooling unit. This study presents and discusses the effects of helium injection rates on the glass fiber cooling rates.

• Journal of computational fluids engineering
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.110-115
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• 2011

A modern optical fiber manufacturing process requires the sufficient cooling of glass fibers freshly drawn from the heated and softened silica preform in the furnace, since the inadequately cooled glass fibers are known to cause improper polymer resin coating on the fiber surface and to adversely affect the product quality of optical fibers. In order to greatly enhance the fiber cooling effectiveness at increasingly high fiber drawing speed, it is necessary to use a dedicated glass fiber cooling unit with helium gas injection between glass fiber drawing and coating processes. The present numerical study features a series of three-dimensional flow and heat transfer computations on the cooling gas and the fast moving glass fiber to analyze the cooling performance of glass fiber cooling unit, in which the helium is supplied through the discretely located rectangular injection holes. The air entrainment into the cooling unit at the fiber inlet is also included in the computational model and it is found to be critical in determining the helium purity in the cooling gas and the cooling effectiveness on glass fiber. The effects of fiber drawing speed and helium injection rate on the helium purity decrease by air entrainment and the glass fiber cooling are also investigated and discussed.

• Journal of computational fluids engineering
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.92-98
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• 2010

In a modern high speed drawing process of optical fibers, it is necessary to use helium as a cooling gas in a glass fiber cooling unit in order to sufficiently cool down the fast moving glass fiber freshly drawn from the heated silica preform in the furnace. Since the air is entrained unavoidably when the glass fiber passes through the cooling unit, the helium is needed to be injected constantly into the cooling unit. The present numerical study investigates and analyzes the air entrainment using an axisymmetric geometry of glass fiber cooling unit. The effects of helium injection rate and direction on the air entrainment rate are discussed in terms of helium purity of cooling gas inside the cooling unit. For a given rate of helium injection, it is found that there exists a certain drawing speed that results in sudden increase in the air entrainment rate, which leads to the decreasing helium purity and therefore the cooling performance of the glass fiber cooling unit. Also, the helium injection in aiding direction is found to be more advantageous than the injection in opposing direction.

• Journal of computational fluids engineering
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.22-29
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• 2011

In this study, the glass fiber drawing from a silica preform in the furnace for the optical fiber manufacturing process is numerically simulated by considering the radiative heating of cylindrically shaped preform. The one-dimensional governing equations of the mass, momentum, and energy conservation for the heated and softened preform are solved as a set of the boundary value problems along with the radiative transfer approximation between the muffle tube and the deformed preform shape, while the furnace heating is modeled by prescribing the temperature distribution of muffle tube. The temperature-dependent viscosity of silica plays an important role in formation of preform neck-down profile when the glass fiber is drawn at high speed. The calculated neck-down profile of preform and the draw tension are found to be reasonable and comparable to the actual results observed in the optical fiber industry. This paper also presents the effects of key operating parameters such as the muffle tube temperature distribution and the fiber drawing speed on the preform neck-down profile and the draw tension. Draw tension varies drastically even with the small change of furnace heating conditions such as maximum heating temperature and heating width, and the fine adjustment of furnace heating is required in order to maintain the appropriate draw tension of 100~200 g.

• Journal of computational fluids engineering
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.69-73
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• 2013

Mass manufacturing of optical fiber includes the process of very thin glass fiber drawing by heating and softening the high purity silica preform and applying the draw tension on the softened tip of preform neck-down profile in a draw furnace. In this computational study, this process is numerically modeled with simplified geometry of the draw furnace which is comprised of essential parts such as concentric graphite heater, muffle tube, and insulation surrounding the heater. The iterative computational scheme is employed between one-dimensional model of neck-down profile prediction and two-dimensional axisymmetric thermo-fluid CFD computation of radiative heating and working gas convection. The computational results show the experimentally observed neck-down profile in heated section of preform, while yielding the reasonable values of draw tension and heater wattage. Also, this study analyzes and discusses the effects of heating conditions such as heater length and temperature on several important aspects of glass fiber drawing process.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.124-130
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• 2014

In a mass manufacturing system of optical fibers, the sufficient cooling of glass fibers freshly drawn from a draw furnace is essential, asinadequately cooled glass fibers can lead to poor resin coating on the fiber surface and possibly fiber breakage during the process. In order to improve fiber cooling at a high drawing speed, it is common to use a helium injection into a glass fiber cooling unit in spite of the high cost of the helium supply. The present numerical analysis carried out three-dimensional thermo-fluid computations of the cooling gas flow and heat transfer on moving glass fiber to determine the cooling performance of glass fiber cooling depending on the method of helium injection. The results showed that afront injection of helium is most effective compared to a uniform or rear injection for reducing air entrainment into the unit and thus cooling the glass fibers at a high fiber drawing speed. However, above a certain amount of injected helium, there was no more increase of the cooling effect regardless of the helium injection method.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.411-417
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• 2005

$Pr^{3+}-doped$ selenide glass optical fiber, which guarantees single-mode propagation of above at least 1310 nm, has been successfully fabricated using a Ge-Ga-Sb-Se glass system. Thermal properties such as glass transition temperature and viscosity of the glasses have been analyzed to find optimum conditions for fiber drawing. Attenuation loss incorporating the effects of an electronic band gap transition, Rayleigh scattering, and multiphonon absorption has also been theoretically estimated for the Ge-Ga-Sb-Se fiber. A conventional double crucible technique has been applied to fabricate the selenide fiber. The background loss of the fiber was estimated to be approximately 0.64 dB/m at 1650 nm, which can be considered fairly good. When excited at approximately 1470 nm, $Pr^{3+}-doped$ selenide fiber resulted in amplified spontaneous emission and saturation behavior with increasing pump power in a U-band wavelength range of 1625 to 1675 nm.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.89-93
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• 2002

PbO contained multicomponent glass and fibers have been obtained by melting process and double crucible method. PbO containing glass is most promising for fabrication of high-numerical aperture optical fiber. In this study, main composition is $SiO_2$, PbO and glass composition mix component oxide such as $K_2O$, $Na_2O$, $B_2O_3$, $A1_2O_3$. Also, the optical, mechanical and structural properties of manufactured fibers by double crucible method are investigated.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.13 no.8
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• pp.88-95
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• 1996

유리섬유가 강화된 열가소성 복합재료 판재의 성형성에 대한 이해를 돕기 위해 이론적 고찰과 실험적 고찰이 행해졌다. 성형시험에서 사용된 형상은 임의의 방향으로 위치한 유리섬유를 중량비로 30% 함유한 폴리프로필렌 재료가 사용되었고, 시험된 형상은 판재의 굽힘성이나 인장성을 측정하는데 널리 사용되는 스위프트컵(Swift flat-bottomed cup)모양이다. 성형시험과 재료시험은 플리프로필렌 Matrix의 유리성 천이온도(Glass transition temperature)와 용융온도 사이에서 행해졌다. 본 연구의 이론과 고찰을 위해서 재료의 평면 방향으로는 동질성을 그리고 그 직각 방향으로는 이질성을 가진 연속체 물질로 가정하여 유도하였다. 이러한 이론적 결과는 실험 결과와 비교되어졌고,이를 통해 시험된 재료의 최적의 성형조건을 제시하였다.