Mathematical Modeling as an Accurate Predictive Tool in Capillary and Microstructured Fiber Manufacture: The Effects of Preform Rotation

Abstract

Abstract-A method for modeling the fabrication of capillary tubes is developed that includes the effects of preform rotation, and is used to reduce or remove polarization mode dispersion and fiber birefringence. The model is solved numerically, making use of extensive experimental investigations into furnace temperature profiles and silica glass viscosities, without the use of fitting parameters. Accurate predictions of the geometry of spun capillary tubes are made and compared directly with experimental results, showing remarkable agreement and demonstrating that the mathematical modeling of fiber drawing promises to be an accurate predictive tool for experimenters. Finally, a discussion of how this model impacts on the rotation of more general microstructured optical fiber preforms is given.Index Terms-Mathematical modeling, optical fiber, optical fiber applications, optical fiber fabrication, optical fiber theory.

Predicting the drawing conditions for Microstructured Optical Fiber fabrication

“…For F300 silica in the temperature range 1673 K  T  2773 K the viscosity, experimentally measured by Urbain et al [42] and discussed by Doremus [43] and Voyce et al [32], is given by,…”

“…There have been several studies utilizing the methods described by Fitt et al [26], such as models to; determine the drawing domain of internal hole pressurization when applied to a square lattice geometry [29], include the effects of preform rotation [30][31][32] and self pressurization [33], and asymptotic analysis of surface tension and internal hole pressurization affects on the drawing process [34]. In this paper we demonstrate how the Fitt model can be used as a practical predictive tool to produce multi-hole symmetric and asymmetric fiber structures, and provides the first experimental validation of these analytical equations when applied to MOFs rather than simple capillaries.…”

Collapsing of glass tubes: analytic approaches in a hydrodynamic problem with free boundaries

“…There is a large series of papers on analytic approaches of the drawing problem since the 1970s (e.g., [9,10,[14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29]), but only fewer papers involve an analytic treatment of collapsing [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] since the 1980s. The approaches on drawing (axial symmetry assumed) favor a perturbation analysis with the prerequisite of a dominating axial viscous flow and axial viscous flow gradient, small axial viscosity dependence, and small inclination of the rod boundary (or tube boundaries) against the rotation axis, as typical for capillary geometries.…”

“…Also, the perturbation analysis has been proven to be rather powerful to include accompanying effects such as the stability (e.g., [9,10,16,17]), temperature-dependent viscosity (e.g., [9,10,14,18,19]), as well as heat conduction, convection, and radiation (e.g., [9,10,15,16]). Recently, it is applied to the drawing of hollow and structured fibers (e.g., [9,22,[25][26][27][28][29]). A substantial analysis of the mathematical and physical concepts on the perturbation treatment of drawing of tubes is given in the extended paper of Fitt et al [9].…”

Progress in the Fabrication of the Next-Generation Soft Glass Microstructured Optical Fibers

“…The preform structure variations are due to slight variations in the extrusion temperature. The larger relative hole size and structure variations in the fibers are due to self-pressurization effect within the cane during fiber drawing [9]. As for the suspended-core F2 glass fibers, the small-core bismuth MOFs with larger number of transverse features exhibit low excess loss (Fig.…”