A Novel Approach to Determine Long Term Performance of Fiber Fusion Splice Protector

摘要

A distributed strain measurement technique is proposed using fiber Bragg grating sensor to validate strain-relief capability of the fiber sleeve protector. The strain/stress profile along the optical fiber can be quantitatively measured by this grating sensing scheme. The experimental results show clearly that the heat-shrink protector not only reinforces the spliced fiber, but also provides compressive stress imparted to the splice section, which prevent from strength degradation due to crack growth. This method is very effective in measuring these stresses and providing a tool for comparing performance of different package designs.