SIMULTANEOUS MEASUREMENT OF OPTICAL AND DYNAMIC MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF PLASTIC OPTICAL FIBERS

Abstract

Dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) is one of the most powerful tools to study the behavior of plastic and polymer composite materials and it is a potentially very useful tool to simulate behavior of plastic optic fibers (POF) in real appli¬cations. The possibility of simultaneous measurements of some optical proper¬ties during DMA would significantly upgrade investigations of POF alone or embedded in some materials. In this work, single cantilever DMA of the POFs that was done simultaneously with measuring the transmitted optical signal in¬tensity is described and discussed. In order to compare mechanical results of the same material for cylindrical and rectangular specimens, rectangular plates were prepared by melting POFs and the same kind of tests were performed. It is shown that changes of the optical signal intensity correspond to the changes of storage modulus of the POF during DMA, and the maximums in optical sig¬nals intensity indicate the beginning of glass transition processes in the POF material

Keywords

• plastic optical fibers
• dynamic mechanical analysis
• storage modulus
• glass/transition temperature
• loss modulus
• simultaneous measurement