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Investigation of the Combined Effects of Simultaneous Heating and Bending of Silica Optical Fiber

Birri, Anthony
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1523878305649017

Abstract Details

2018, Master of Science, Ohio State University, Nuclear Engineering.
Optical fibers have the unique application of distributed sensing in harsh environments. Optical fibers may be used for spatially distributed sensing of temperature, strain, pressure, as well as other related physical quantities. For this reason, optical fibers have potential for facility monitoring, materials testing, the collection of Big Data, and experimental research. Optical fibers can withstand extremely high temperatures (temperature limits around 1000 °C for silica fiber, and around 1400 °C for sapphire fiber), which make them of particular interest for industries such as the nuclear industry and the petroleum industry. In fact, the U.S. Department of Energy has expressed interest in the utilization of optical fibers of next-generation instrumentation of nuclear reactors. Due to promising aspects of optical fibers for harsh environment sensing, it is necessary to understand the behavior of optical fiber in such harsh environments. Optical fibers will undergo extremely high temperatures if utilized in many of the next-generation reactor designs. Also, it is likely that a fiber will undergo some degree of bending in their implementation. The focus of this work is the simultaneous effects of heating and bending silica optical fiber. This work should act as an expansion on the current knowledge that exists in literature for unbent (or at least insignificantly bent) fiber heated at extremely high temperatures. In this work, multimode and single-mode silica fibers have been tested in a high temperature setting, while simultaneously experiencing a bend. The range of temperature tested was 500-1000° C and the bend radii considered were 1.27, 2.54, and 3.81 cm (0.5, 1.0, and 1.5 inches). Multimode fiber (MMF) was analyzed for transmission, while single-mode fiber (SMF) was both analyzed for transmission and interpreted by optical backscatter reflectometry. Attenuation was observed to increase in MMF with increasingly high temperatures and tighter bend radii. SMF was far more resilient to transmission loss than MMF, under similar conditions of temperature and curvature. Optical backscatter reflectometry was performed for bent SMF up to 1100 °C, and revealed evidence that, at high temperatures, bends in fiber can enhance devitrification that can inhibit light transmission through the fiber. This work suggests that the devitrification process begins at the surface of the fiber and moves inward. Moreover, this work suggests that bend stress applied to surface flaws of the fiber leads to significantly higher crystallization rates at temperatures at which silica does not typically devitrify so rapidly.
Thomas Blue (Advisor)
Marat Khafizov (Committee Member)
64 p.
Nuclear Engineering
bend loss; devitrification; silica; optical fiber; attenuation; distributed sensing

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Birri, A. (2018). Investigation of the Combined Effects of Simultaneous Heating and Bending of Silica Optical Fiber [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1523878305649017

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Birri, Anthony. Investigation of the Combined Effects of Simultaneous Heating and Bending of Silica Optical Fiber. 2018. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1523878305649017.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Birri, Anthony. "Investigation of the Combined Effects of Simultaneous Heating and Bending of Silica Optical Fiber." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1523878305649017

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1523878305649017
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.