It is essential to properly cool down the glass fiber drawn from the fused silica preform in the high speed manufacturing process of high quality optical fiber. Natural cooling of glass fiber in the quiescent air is adequate only at low speed glass fi...
It is essential to properly cool down the glass fiber drawn from the fused silica preform in the high speed manufacturing process of high quality optical fiber. Natural cooling of glass fiber in the quiescent air is adequate only at low speed glass fiber drawing, and the modem optical fiber manufacturing requires a dedicated cooling unit with the helium injection in order to increase the thermal conductivity of cooling gas in the cooling unit. Even though the helium is constantly injected into the cooling unit, the air is still entrained and unavoidable when the glass fiber passes through the cooling unit. Thus, it is critical to find the operating conditions to minimize the amount of the air entrainment. The present numerical study investigates the air entrainment into the cooling unit from the outer atmosphere, and the effects of helium injection rate and direction on the air entrainment rate are discussed.