Establishment of air-pressure-feed optical cable laying method

摘要

In recent years the laying of communication cables in underground pipes has tended toward longer distance in order to reduce the number of construction steps, and this is being done by mechanization using optical fiber cable pulling machines of shaft drive winches. But handhole and other dimensional constraints mean that human labor, such as for pulling by hand, must be relied upon in sections where such installation machinery cannot be installed. In order to safely install long-distance optical cable within the allowed tension range, the tension to which an optical cable is subjected must be kept down, and this is why optical fiber cable pulling machines and set up every several hundred meters to distribute the installation tension. Now an air-pressure-feed construction method has been established in which air pressure is used to safely lay such cables in long sections without the use of these cable-laying devices; this is a report on the results.