Basic Design for Stable Fiber-Clamping in Multi-Fiber Ribbon Mechanical Splice

Toshiaki KATAGIRI, Masao TACHIKURA, Yasuji MURAKAMI

Summary :

In mechanical splice technology, loss change during temperature cycling is mainly caused by fiber slippage or shift at the interface between fibers and fiber clamping substrates. The upper limit of the fabrication accuracy of the fibers and substrates restricts the total number of fibers in a splice. To overcome this, we propose a novel fiber clamping method using the elasticity of the substrate surface. We clamp the fibers more strongly at the fiber clamping ends, where the fibers need a greater friction force than around the butt-joint, to hold them in position. Taking the case of an 8-fiber ribbon splice, we compared linear marks on the substrates with the boundary linewidth curves for the onset of slippage. We achieved an insertion loss change of less than 0.1 dB during a temperature cycling test in accordance with Telcordia Technologies test specification. When we clamp fibers using the plasticity of the substrate surface, we can also reduce the required fabrication accuracy. However, insufficient accuracy causes an unexpected loss change due to fiber shift as a result of a plastic flow on the substrate surface in contact with the fibers.

• Publication: IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Communications Vol.E84-B No.8 pp.2161-2169
• Publication Date: 2001/08/01
• Type of Manuscript: PAPER
• Category: Optical Fiber

Authors

Toshiaki KATAGIRI
Masao TACHIKURA
Yasuji MURAKAMI

Keyword

slippage,  elastic,  plastic,  shear force,  mechanical splice