Optical Fiber Cable Tensile & Crush Testing Machine

The cable length under test us 150 meters, Additional cable length is needed to connect the fibers to be tester.

Apparatus

The apparatus consists of:

1.An attenuation measuring apparatus, typically an OTDR

2.A fiber elongation strain measuring apparatus based on dispersion testing equipment

3.A specially designed tensile test machine capable of tensioning 150 meters of optical cable in six legs of 25 meters each. The machine is equipped with a motor for controlled tensioning and a load cell for measuring the actual tension applied on the cable.

Procedure

The cable is wound in the machine over appropriately sized sheaves. The cable ends extend to reach the measuring instruments. A pre-determined number of fibers within the cable are concatenated by fusion splicing. Typically, two sets of fibers are used, one will serve to measure attenuation change and the other serves for elongation monitoring.

After all initial measurements and calibration are carried out, the cable is pulled at a specified rate until a pre-determined tension is applied. The cable is laid to rest under tension as per detail specifications, and then the attenuation and fiber length are measured. This process may involve several tensile levels in order to characterize the entire tensile behavior of the cable, or be carried out only at the defined maximum allowed tension level.