• Journal of computational fluids engineering
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.69-73
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• 2013

Mass manufacturing of optical fiber includes the process of very thin glass fiber drawing by heating and softening the high purity silica preform and applying the draw tension on the softened tip of preform neck-down profile in a draw furnace. In this computational study, this process is numerically modeled with simplified geometry of the draw furnace which is comprised of essential parts such as concentric graphite heater, muffle tube, and insulation surrounding the heater. The iterative computational scheme is employed between one-dimensional model of neck-down profile prediction and two-dimensional axisymmetric thermo-fluid CFD computation of radiative heating and working gas convection. The computational results show the experimentally observed neck-down profile in heated section of preform, while yielding the reasonable values of draw tension and heater wattage. Also, this study analyzes and discusses the effects of heating conditions such as heater length and temperature on several important aspects of glass fiber drawing process.

• 한국전산유체공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2011.05a
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• pp.88-91
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• 2011

Glass fiber drawing from a silica preform is one of the most important processes in optical fiber manufacturing. High purify silica preform of cylindrical shape is fed into the graphite furnace, and then a very thin glass fiber of 125 micron diameter is drawn from the softened and heated preform. A computational analysis is performed to investigate the heat transfer characteristics of preform heating and the glass fiber drawing in the furnace. In addition to the dominant radiative heating of preform by the heating element in the furnace, present analysis also includes the convective heat transport by the gas flowing around the preform that experiences neck-dawn profile and the freshly drawn glass fiber at high fiber drawing speed. The computational results present the effects of gas flow on the temperature of preform and glass fiber as well as the neck-down profile of preform.

• Journal of computational fluids engineering
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.22-29
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• 2011

In this study, the glass fiber drawing from a silica preform in the furnace for the optical fiber manufacturing process is numerically simulated by considering the radiative heating of cylindrically shaped preform. The one-dimensional governing equations of the mass, momentum, and energy conservation for the heated and softened preform are solved as a set of the boundary value problems along with the radiative transfer approximation between the muffle tube and the deformed preform shape, while the furnace heating is modeled by prescribing the temperature distribution of muffle tube. The temperature-dependent viscosity of silica plays an important role in formation of preform neck-down profile when the glass fiber is drawn at high speed. The calculated neck-down profile of preform and the draw tension are found to be reasonable and comparable to the actual results observed in the optical fiber industry. This paper also presents the effects of key operating parameters such as the muffle tube temperature distribution and the fiber drawing speed on the preform neck-down profile and the draw tension. Draw tension varies drastically even with the small change of furnace heating conditions such as maximum heating temperature and heating width, and the fine adjustment of furnace heating is required in order to maintain the appropriate draw tension of 100~200 g.

• Journal of computational fluids engineering
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.92-98
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• 2010

In a modern high speed drawing process of optical fibers, it is necessary to use helium as a cooling gas in a glass fiber cooling unit in order to sufficiently cool down the fast moving glass fiber freshly drawn from the heated silica preform in the furnace. Since the air is entrained unavoidably when the glass fiber passes through the cooling unit, the helium is needed to be injected constantly into the cooling unit. The present numerical study investigates and analyzes the air entrainment using an axisymmetric geometry of glass fiber cooling unit. The effects of helium injection rate and direction on the air entrainment rate are discussed in terms of helium purity of cooling gas inside the cooling unit. For a given rate of helium injection, it is found that there exists a certain drawing speed that results in sudden increase in the air entrainment rate, which leads to the decreasing helium purity and therefore the cooling performance of the glass fiber cooling unit. Also, the helium injection in aiding direction is found to be more advantageous than the injection in opposing direction.