SZ Stranding of Compact and Dry Optical Fiber Loose Tubes

摘要

There are two major trends in stranded loose tube cable constructions. Cable constructions are getting more and more compact and at the same time there is growing interest in totally dry cables. When these two issues are combined, we have new and very cost effective cable constructions. Compact cable means less material costs. Dry cable constructions save money in installation, because there is no need to remove the filling compounds when splicing the fibers. Both compact cables and dry cables are lighter in weight compared to traditional cables, which means less costs in storage, transportation and installation. There is also a growing number of applications where the cable diameter is limited by some external factor, for example microduct size for blown cable installation. This kind of special requirements are most commonly found in the FTTH applications. Fiber optic cables have smaller diameter and are lighter in weight compared to copper telecom cables with high bandwidth. This advantage is even more pronounced when the fiber optic cable is composed of very compact sub-units. These very compact cables can be installed with air blowing. This installation method does not require as high mechanical robustness as traditional hauling. This is the application where the benefits are the highest for compact and dry loose tube cables. Of course additional strength members can be added on top of compact cable core, if higher mechanical robustness is needed. In this paper, the stranding process for dry tubes will be studied in detail. Results concerning process parameters will be presented.