EOW May 2014

Technical article

5 Acknowledgement The authors would like to acknowledge the efforts of the people at Plumattez Inc for conducting the cable COF testing, which was critical to bring out the value of lower COF formulations during cable installation. 6 References 1 New Design of Thinner, Low-Friction Indoor Drop Cable for MDUs. Masakazu Takami, Itaru Sakabe, Hiroki Ishikawa, Hiroyuki Sotome, Katsuyuki Aihara, Yohei Suzuki, Masayoshi Yamano, Mitsumasa Seita, Takayasu Yamauchi and Masahiro Hamada. Optical Fibre and Cable Division, Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd. 244-8588, Japan. 58 th International Wire and Cable Symposium 2 Fibre Optic Cable Assemblies for Space Flight Applications: Issues and Remedies, Melanie Ott, Jeannette Plante, Swales Aerospace NASA Goddard Space Flight Center 19 th February, 1997, SAE international/American, Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and presented at the World Aviation Congress in October 1997 3 Fibre Cable Design Considerations for the Pending RUS PE-90 Spec Revision, Draka Communications, Association of Communication Engineers School, 5/8/2008 4 Development and Challenge to Realise Ultra High Density Loose Tube Cable Optimized for Microduct Use, Yoshio Hashimoto, Takayuki Kubo, Naoki Okada and Nobuyuki Misono, Telecommunication Cable Research & Development Dept, Telecommunication Cable System Division, Fujikura Ltd, 55 th International Wire and Cable Symposium 5 Electrical cable having a surface with reduced coefficient of friction, Randy D Kummer, et al, Southwire Company, US 7,411,129 B2, 2008 6 Multi-layer oriented polypropylene films with low COF skins, Meivil B Clamson, et al. Mobil Oil Corp, US 4,578,316, 1986 7 Slip and anti-block additives: surface medication for film and sheet, Jennifer Markarian, Plastics, Additives and Compounding, Volume 9 (6), 32–35 (2007) 8 Ultra-High-Molecular-Weight Functional Siloxane Additives in Polymer. Effect on Processing and Properties. Kevin J Ryan, Kevin E Lupton, Peter G Pape and Vivian B John. Journal of Vinyl and Additive Technology, 6 (1), 7-19 (2000) This paper is courtesy of the IWCS Symposium, Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, November 2013.

Coefficient of Friction

Control

Control lubed

EXP1

EXP2

▲ ▲ Figure 4 : Coefficient of friction measured on cables at Plumettaz testing. EXP1 and EXP2 are cables made with 1.25 per cent and 2.25 per cent of additives

Jetting Distance (m)

Control

Control lubed

EXP1

EXP2

▲ ▲ Figure 5 : Simulated jetting distance using coefficient of friction measured on Plumettaz cable testing

This can make pulling the cable through ducts easier and eliminate the need to use lubricants during cable jetting.

These results suggest that jetting cables with slip additives lead to more than a 50 per cent reduction in COF over the dry control. COF performances of the EXP samples are comparable to the lubed control cables. Increasing the additive level by one per cent does not lead to significant improvement in COF performance. Figure 5 shows the simulated jetting distances obtained from the COF calculated in cable testing. As expected, lower COF leads to longer jetting distances. The simulations clearly highlight the advantage of utilising slip additives, as they can achieve about twice the jetting distance over the dry control, and similar jetting distances as the lubed cable. The jetting distance of the EXP cables are similar to the lubed cable, thus potentially eliminating the need to utilise external lubricants during installation.

4 Conclusions This paper presents a way of reducing the COF of an HDPE jacket that is commonly used for fibre optic jacketing applications. First lab scale testing was done on compression moulded plaques with two different slip additives to show that using a combination of both the slip additives has a synergistic effect on COF reduction. Testing of COF during cable installation on dummy fibre optic cable showed that addition of slip additives can lead to double the COF reduction and increase in jetting distance over dry control cable. This can potentially eliminate use of lubricants during jetting installation and improve ease of pulling cable during installation. n

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May 2014