Development of Optical Drop Cable with Low Friction Material

摘要

With a rapid expansion of optical network, the number of optical fiber installations into condominiums has been increasing as well as into homes. In case of installation into a condominium, optical drop cable is often multi-installed with other cables through the same conduit line.The conventional optical drop cable installed through a conduit line makes the workability or long-term reliability worse, since its sheath material is lack resistance to abrasion because of higher skin friction resistance or much tension in cable installation is needed and some lubricant is putted on the surface of optical drop cable. In order to develop the suitable optical drop cable for multi-installation, we evaluated sheath materials with the low friction coefficient and high abrasion resistance. As a result, it was confirmed that ETHYLENE-α-OLEFIN COPOLYMER/Heat-resistant POLYOLEFIN sheath materials had almost the same friction coefficient as ETHYLENE COPOLYMER sheath materials doped with fatty acid amid, and quite excellent abrasion resistance. And also, we performed environmental, mechanical, and flame retardancy tests of optical drop cable, and confirmed that newly developed low friction jacket optical drop cable is excellent as well as the conventional cable.