• 한국전산유체공학회지
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• 제18권4호
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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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• 한국전산유체공학회 2011년 춘계학술대회논문집
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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.