COMPUTATIONAL STUDY OF GLASS FIBER DRAWING PROCESS IN A DRAW FURNACE OF OPTICAL FIBER MASS MANUFACTURING SYSTEM

In mass manufacturing of optical fibers, the wet-on-wet polymer resin coating is an efficient process for applying double layer coatings on the glass fiber. This paper presents an analytic study on the behavior of non-Newtonian polymer resins in the double layer coating liquid flow inside a secondary coating die of the optical fiber coating applicator. Based the approximations of fully developed laminar flow and the power law model of non-Newtonian fluid, the coating liquid flow of two immiscible resin layers is modeled for the simplified geometry of capillary annulus, where the surface of glass fiber moves at high fiber drawing speed. The effects of important parameters such as non-Newtonian fluid properties, the coating die size, and fiber drawing speed are investigated on the resin velocity profiles and secondary coating layer thickness.

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A state space model for modern feedback control of optical fiber drawing process

Proceedings 2003 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM 2003) ◽

10.1109/aim.2003.1225454 ◽

2004 ◽

Author(s):

S. Tchikanda ◽

Kok-Meng Lee ◽

Z. Zhou

Keyword(s):

Feedback Control ◽

Optical Fiber ◽

State Space ◽

State Space Model ◽

Drawing Process ◽

Fiber Drawing ◽

Space Model ◽

Optical Fiber Drawing

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Helium-Injection Cooling of Hot Silica Glass Fiber in Optical Fiber Manufacturing System

Applied Mechanics and Materials ◽

10.4028/www.scientific.net/amm.157-158.1301 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 157-158 ◽

pp. 1301-1304

Author(s):

Dong Joo Kim ◽

Il Seok Oh ◽

Ho Sang Kwak ◽

Kyoung Jin Kim

Keyword(s):

Optical Fiber ◽

Glass Fiber ◽

Glass Fibers ◽

Air Entrainment ◽

Injection Rate ◽

Fiber Drawing ◽

Cooling Effectiveness ◽

Drawing Speed ◽

Cooling Unit ◽

Fiber Manufacturing

In an optical fiber manufacturing process, glass fibers drawn from the heated silica preform in the furnace should be sufficiently cooled down close to ambient temperature. As the fiber drawing speed continues to increase for better manufacturing productivity, the glass fiber cooling becomes more difficult and the use of helium injection into the glass fiber cooling unit is required to greatly enhance the fiber cooling effectiveness. The present study numerically simulates the flowfield and heat transfer phenomena on the glass fiber cooling in order to investigate the effects of helium injection and fiber drawing speed on the fiber cooling effectiveness of glass cooling unit. The results found that the amount of air entrainment at the unit inlet is the significant factor that decides the cooling effectiveness by significantly lowering the helium purity in cooling gas. Also, at a given fiber drawing speed, there exists a critical helium injection rate and the fiber cooling does not improve any more, even if the helium injection rate increases above this critical value.

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