Analysis and experiments of the arc heating for fiber fused biconical taper technology

The heating temperature is one of the key factors in the fiber fused biconical taper manufacture, which can affect the component performance. In order to improve the temperature stability and controllability in the heating region, the high-voltage arc heating device is presented and arc heating, heating region temperature and fiber preheating are studied. The high-frequency high voltage power source, in which the current and frequency can be adjusted independently, and electrodes are designed. The closed-loop controls of the voltage and current are applied to ensure the success of the arc ignition and the stability of the arc discharge current, and the discharge process is analyzed. The temperature detection device in which the infrared camera is adopted to measure the heating region temperature by the ceramic rod is designed. Through the analysis of experimental data, the relationships among the frequency, arc control voltage, arc current, heating distance and arc region temperature are determined. According to experiments and computation results, the temperature of the arc center region can reach 1635℃ within the stability of 2.37℃. Based on the established heating model for fine fibers with the diameter of 80 μm, the preheating time is computed by the transient analysis of the ANSYS software. It is shown that the temperature of the heating region can reach the stability by 25 s.