A novel dynamic opto‐thermo‐mechanical stress testing device 1: Design of the device

Abstract

This article presents a dynamic opto-thermo-mechanical stress testing device to characterize fiber properties. The device has multi-modes and consists of many functions. These modes include stretching, bending, rotating, twisting, and heating processes. Every process can be controlled by micro-controller unit via software programs specially designed for this purpose. The micro-controller unit can execute two different processes at the same time. Such as, dynamic stretching process under the effect of thermal treatment, dynamic stretching process and relaxation, bending process under the effect of thermal treatment, and so forth. Software programs with their flow charts are designed for the application of these processes. The advantage of this device is that it can be done statically and dynamically to characterize all types of fibers (polymer and optical). The device is designed to be attached with two-beam polarizing interference microscope to investigate the dynamic opto-thermo-mechanical properties of the tested fiber under the effect of different applied stresses. Isotactic polypropylene, iPP, fiber is used for some applications of this device, as examples, in stretching, rotation, and twisting modes. Interferograms and graphs are given for illustration.