A watertight load-bearing connector for zero-buoyancy optical cable

Abstract

A zero-buoyancy optical cable watertight force bearing connector comprises a plug and a socket. The plug comprises a plug housing, a sealing tail sleeve, an O-shaped ring, a sealing assembly, a force bearing assembly and a plug butt-joint assembly. The socket comprises a socket housing, a locking nut, a sealing tail sleeve, a sealing assembly, a force bearing assembly and a socket butt-joint assembly. The plug butt-joint assembly comprises a baffle plate, an MPO optical fiber connector, a plug core and a plug retaining ring. The socket butt-joint assembly comprises an MPO optical fiber connector, an MPO optical fiber flange, a socket core and a socket retaining ring. When integral butt-joint between the plug and the socket is performed by means of a pair of MPO optical connectors through the MPO optical fiber flange, the plug housing is hermetically connected with the socket housing through the locking nut and the O-shaped ring. The zero-buoyancy optical cable watertight force bearing connector has advantages of high mechanical strength, high butt-joint coupling efficiency, high insertion loss consistency, low machining difficulty, low machining cost and long service life. The density of the zero-buoyancy optical cable watertight force bearing connector can approach the density of seawater. The zero-buoyancy optical cable watertight force bearing connector has advantages of greatly reducing resistance in towing and effectively reducing underwater noise of a system.

Description

[0001] Technical field: [0002] The invention relates to a reusable underwater passive device for connecting two zero-buoyancy optical cables to form a continuous optical path. Low difficulty, low processing cost, long service life, density can be close to the density of seawater, can greatly reduce the resistance during towing, and effectively reduce the underwater noise of the system. [0003] Background technique: [0004] Zero-buoyancy optical cable watertight load-bearing connectors are mainly used for watertight load-bearing connections between zero-buoyancy optical cables in systems such as underwater towed platforms, unmanned remote control submersibles, and zero-buoyancy towed bodies, because these systems need to ensure that they can float in seawater Any depth position, and towed by zero-buoyancy optical cables and connectors, front-end sensing detection and rear-end signal processing control require multiple optical fibers for transmission, so the watertight force-...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

The watertight load-bearing connector of the zero-buoyancy optical cable with the first structure in the prior art has the following four disadvantages: (1) The increase of the bonding volume can only be realized by increasing the length or outer diameter, and a large increase in length will be unfavorable When the optical cable is retracted, the increase of the outer diameter will greatly increase the underwater resistance and noise, which is not conducive to underwater dragging and detection sensing; (2) the hollow glass beads bonded to the tail of the optical cable and the connector cannot act When the sealing plug in the connector fails, it will cause the overall sealing failure of the connector, and the sealing reliability will be greatly reduced; (3) The hollow glass microsphere is bonded to the connector shell with an adhesive And the outer surface of the root of the optical cable, under long-term action, it may peel off, thus destroying the density performance of the connector; (4) The process operation control of bonding hollow glass beads is relatively complicated, and it is difficult to accurately meet the density of the connector need

However, the strength of non-metallic materials is generally lower than that of metal materials, so the mechanical strength of non-metallic connectors is not high, and they cannot be subjected to excessive pressure, tension and shear forces, and cannot meet the requirements of underwater towing.

Therefore, the zero-buoyancy optical cable connector of the second structure has the following four disadvantages: (1) If the connector shell uses non-metallic materials that are easy to process, the strength of the shell will be greatly reduced, and it cannot protect the interior; ( 2) Since the processing of the connector shell is relatively complicated, if high-strength non-metallic materials are used, the processing difficulty and processing cost will be greatly increased; (3) The bonding sleeve of the connector is processed with non-metallic materials, which will cause the adhesive to stick The connection effect is not good, which greatly reduces the pull-off force of the optical cable in the connector; (4) Most non-metallic materials will experience slow aging, and cannot meet the long-term use requirements of the system

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