For many years, fiber manufacturers have devoted research efforts to develop fibers with improved radiation
resistance, keeping the same advantages and basic properties as standard fibers. Today, both single-mode (SMF) and
multimode (MMF) RadHard (for Radiation-Hardened) fibers are available; some of them are MIL-49291 certified and
are already used, for example in military applications and at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in CERN or in certain
nuclear power plants. These RadHard fibers can be easily connected to standard optical networks for classical data
transfer or they can also be used for command control. Using some specific properties (Raman or Brillouin scattering,
Bragg gratings...), such fibers can also be used as distributed sensing (temperature or strain sensors, etc) in radiation
environments. At least, optical fibers can also be used for signal amplification, either in telecom networks, or in fiber
lasers. This last category of fibers is called active fibers, in opposition to passive fibers used for simple signal
transmission. Draka has also recently worked to improve the radiation-resistance of these active fibers, so that Draka can
now offer RadHard fibers for full optical systems.
In addition to the numerous assessments presented in literature of the radiation-induced optical property changes in
optical fibres, we investigate the impact of MGy dose levels on the mechanical properties of different single and
multimode fibres. We compare the tensile test and two-point bending test results obtained by two different laboratories
with commercially available optical fibres before and after irradiation up to 15 MGy. Our results show a significant
strength reduction of about 50 % at high dose levels, relevant for particular applications in nuclear power facilities and in
large nuclear physics experiments. This strength reduction seems to depend on both the coating materials and the test
conditions, as suggested by the roughening of the outer glass surface of the optical fibre, observed with atomic force
microscope (AFM) images.
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