New Breakthrough of Sharetop Technology's New Ultrafine Polarization Maintaining Fiber Applied in Ship and Aerospace Specialty

Sharetop Technology Co., Ltd. passed the product design appraisal smoothly. Experts from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Harbin University of Engineering, Aerospace Science and Engineering, Aerospace Industry, Aerospace Science and Technology, China Shipping Heavy Industry and other well-known units in the industry formed the review panel of the finalization meeting. After listening to the development summary report, reliability report, user report and third-party test report, the relevant process documents were strictly examined, and the production line was inspected on the spot. The Expert Group agreed that as the first innovative thin-diameter polarization-maintaining special optical fiber product in the world, the key performance indexes of XYT PM1310A-60/100 and PM1550B-60/100 polarization-maintaining thin-diameter optical fibers, such as all-temperature crosstalk stability and bending performance, have reached the advanced international level. It is worth mentioning that it has broken the tight lock of key military basic materials in European and American countries, and has broken through the high level of our country. The key technology bottleneck of precision gyroscope is a milestone to promote the performance of high precision inertial navigation system in China.

In the space rocket and missile equipments which require strict directional navigation, the inertial system which controls the attitude and trajectory of the carrier plays an important role. Fiber optic gyroscope (FOG) has many advantages, such as short start-up time, simple structure, light weight, no active components, strong environmental adaptability and so on. It has become the main direction of rapid development in the field of inertial navigation technology. The volume and weight of FOG have a great influence on the overall design of satellite, missile and other equipment. The fiber optic ring wrapped by polarization maintaining fiber is the core sensing unit. The precision of FOG is closely related to the length of the fiber optic ring. Therefore, under the premise of ensuring high precision, high stability and environmental adaptability, polarization maintaining fibers must develop in the direction of fine core diameter and large length.

Schematic Diagram of Satellite Docking Attitude Adjustment

The smaller the diameter of the optical fiber is, the thinner the coating will be. The thinner the coating will lead to the decrease of anti-interference ability. It needs the support of material and technology to ensure its accuracy. After more than ten years of technological changes, the external diameter of polarization maintaining optical fibers has been reduced from 400 microns to 165 microns. In 2013, FYT pioneered the development of 135 micron polarization-maintaining optical fibers; after repeated tests, many improvements in technology and equipment, FYT launched 60/100 ultra-fine diameter polarization-maintaining optical fibers in 2018, that is, polarization-maintaining optical fibers with an external diameter of only 100 microns, which quickly gained the recognition and demand of experts in relevant fields and the market, and has now begun mass production.
After the outer diameter of the polarization-maintaining fiber is reduced from 165 micron to 100 micron, its volume and weight are only one third of the original product, which effectively reduces the weight and occupancy space of navigation system components of aerospace carriers (such as rockets, satellites, missiles, etc.). This type of fiber will lay the foundation for the development of navigation technology in aerospace field in China. At present, XYT polarization-maintaining optical fiber has been applied in many fields such as long March launch vehicle, practical satellite and cargo spacecraft Tianzhou-1 in 2017, such as aerospace, ship and weapon industry.