What are light armor and heavy armor in optical fiber and how to choose and use them?

In optical fiber wiring engineering, some wiring environments may be wet or bitten by small animals. If it is ordinary optical fiber wiring, it is easy to damage the optical fiber, resulting in intermittent or interrupted signals. In this case, armored optical fiber can be considered.

Armored optical fiber refers to a protective "armor" wrapped around the optical fiber, which is mainly used to protect the optical fiber and has the functions of moisture-proof and rat-bite prevention.

Armored optical fiber is divided into indoor armored optical fiber and outdoor armored optical fiber, and indoor armored optical fiber is divided into single armored optical fiber and double armored optical fiber. Single armored optical fiber refers to optical cable without stainless steel braided wire, and double armored optical fiber refers to optical cable with stainless steel hose and stainless steel braided wire.

Outdoor armored fiber can be divided into light armored fiber and heavy armored fiber. Lightly armored optical fiber refers to optical fiber containing steel tape and aluminum tape, while heavily armored optical fiber will be wrapped with a circle of steel wire. Light armored optical fiber is mainly used to strengthen the protection of optical fiber, waterproof and prevent animal bites, while heavy armored optical fiber is mainly used in riverbed, seabed and other environments.

Among the optical fibers, the fiber with aramid fiber inside is relatively expensive, and materials such as steel tape and aluminum tape are relatively cheap, which is also the reason why outdoor optical fiber is cheaper than indoor optical fiber.

Outdoor optical cable is used to strengthen steel wire and steel strip and pay attention to tensile performance, but indoor optical cable should be soft while paying attention to tensile performance. Therefore, although the tensile performance of indoor optical cable is not better than that of outdoor optical cable, in order to meet both of them, aramid fiber is generally used as the material for indoor optical cable.