JPH11213779A - Optical composite power cable to be joined to movable body and its utilization - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To prevent communication from getting impossible due to occurrence of transmission loss caused by insertion of an optical fiber cable into a gap even in the case there is a movable body such as a robot at a far distance and tensile force is high. SOLUTION: Aramid fiber wires 2 produced by coating and fixing bundles of Aramid fibers (polymer material with high strength) with resin are stranded and electric power cables 15 for power supply and optical fiber cables 13 are stranded around the outer side of the Aramid fiber wires 2 to include at least one optical fiber cable and the resultant body is sheathed in a rubber or a plastic sheath to give an optical composite power cable. A method for operating a movable body while untwisting the twisted cable at the time of abnormal movement of a movable body by constantly monitoring the transmission loss property of the cable instead of monitoring the situation of the cable extended long is employed for the method for operating the movable body, and consequently, the cable life is prolonged.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an optical composite power cable for supplying power and transmitting an optical signal to a moving body such as a robot working underwater, and a method of using the same.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, an optical composite power cable has been used as a cable for supplying power to a mobile body and controlling its operation. A moving object is a robot or a deep-sea boat that has the ability to move freely, receives power as power, moves by turning an axle or turning a screw, and pulls the cable backward to perform the required work. Is what you do.

Accordingly, a cable that supplies power to a moving body and controls its operation is generally light and has high tensile strength.
Further, it is desirable that the movable body be easily bent without hindering the movement of the moving body. Further, a cable that does not easily wear is desirable. The pulling force is applied when the moving body is sent to a distant place or when the moving body is recalled from a distant place. When the route length is long and the route shape has a complicated bend, it may reach several tons.

FIG. 6 is a cross-sectional view of a conventionally used optical composite power cable. The conventional optical composite power cable has a configuration similar to that of a submarine electric wire. One or two layers of FRP wires are provided as tension members 16 instead of iron sheathing on the outside, and the power cable 15 and the optical fiber cable are provided on the inside. 13 was used. The use of FRP instead of iron wire is advantageous in that it can reduce the weight in water and does not rust.

FIG. 7 shows the arrangement of water channels and machines used by the inventors. The moving body 19 is a robot used for checking a step at a connecting portion of the 1.4 km long water channel 20, and the water channel is bent right and left and up and down. In addition, a tension meter is provided at the base of the cable of the moving body, and the cable tension at the base of the robot is measured. The pulled-out cable is collected using a winding machine 21 using a belt, and the tension of the cable is detected by a roller 22.

[0006]

When the inside of the waterway was inspected using the cable shown in FIG. 6, the loss of the optical fiber was frequently increased, and the communication became impossible. When the cable is wound up and examined, the softest optical fiber cable is pushed into the gap by being pressed against the power cable, and a cable that is particularly strongly bent occurs in the optical fiber, and transmission loss occurs due to local bending and twisting. It turned out that communication was impossible. This is because when a robot is far away and the tensile load increases or fluctuates due to static friction or dynamic friction, the winding of each cable is tightened or loosened, and the torsion promotes pushing into the gap and destroys the optical fiber cable. I can understand.

[0007] Each time, it takes a lot of time to replace the cable and the like, and a situation occurs in which the operation of the mobile body is hindered. For this reason, the task was to produce a cable with a structure that did not affect the optical fiber even when a large tension was applied.
Another object was to find a way to operate the moving object without damaging the optical fiber using the cable.

[0008]

Accordingly, in a composite optical power cable for feeding power and transmitting an optical signal to a mobile body, a high-strength high-molecular fiber bundle represented by aramid fiber is coated with a resin at the center as shown in FIG. An aramid fiber wire 2 is twisted and a power cable 15 for power supply and an optical fiber cable 1
At least one or more optical fiber cables are inserted into the optical fiber cable 3 to produce an optical composite power cable connected to a moving body having a rubber or plastic sheath. The aramid fiber wire is made into two layers and the winding direction is alternated to make it more resistant to twisting, and the power cable and the optical fiber cable are alternately wound in the outer two layers to increase the occupied area, increase the number of power cable cores and make the optical fiber thinner. The pressure applied to is reduced. This makes it difficult to loosen in any direction.

In the method of operating the mobile unit by feeding the optical signal and transmitting the optical signal to the mobile unit using the optical composite power cable, the transmission loss characteristic of the optical fiber cable, in which the twist of the cable greatly affects the life of the optical fiber, is constantly monitored. Take a method using an optical composite power cable, and further operate the mobile object while monitoring the transmission characteristics of the optical fiber cable when feeding and sending an optical signal to the mobile object using the optical composite power cable, The cable has a long life by adopting a method of operating a moving body by rotating to recover torsion.

[0010]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS A cable according to the present invention is shown in FIG. 1 and will be described in detail. A polyethylene layer is extruded on a central steel wire to form a core 1 having a predetermined outer diameter, and a wire 2 obtained by coating an aramid fiber (polymer high-strength material) bundle with a resin on the core is twisted, and two layers are alternately twisted at a pitch. The polyethylene layer 3 is extruded to constitute a portion that bears tension. The outer diameter is adjusted by a layer of foamed polyethylene 4 on the outside as a cushion layer. And a 27-core power cable and 4
Two layers of the mixed optical fiber cable 13 are manufactured in different winding directions. The power cable has a twisted wire covered with polyethylene, and the optical fiber has a polyethylene spacer 12 in which four optical fibers 11 are spirally wound on a polyethylene spacer 17 and has an outer diameter of approximately the same diameter. An inner sheath (PVC) is coated thereon, and an outer sheath (polyethylene) is further coated to a thickness of 4 mm. This cable weighs 3 kg / m and has an underwater weight of 0.3 kg / m.
At 6 kg / m, the power cable is 27 sq.

As a comparative example, an optical fiber composite cable in which the tension members of the FRP shown in FIG. Even if the tension member is made into two layers and the rigidity is weakened or alternately wound and twisted in any direction,
It does not loosen.

When the above cable was used to operate the robot 19 of FIG. 7 and the cable together with the robot and the cable of 10 tons and the underwater weight of 2 tons for inspection and cleaning, the transmission loss characteristics of the optical fiber cable were constantly monitored. The system is shown in FIG. This device controls an optical attenuation meter and an optical fiber channel selector by a notebook personal computer, and performs an abnormal alarm and data recording together. The alarm is 7 when 4dB circuit loss at no load
When it reaches dB, an alarm is issued. When it reaches 10 dB, an abnormal alarm is issued, the robot stops running, and the robot is rotated around the cable axis to recover the twist and recover the loss of the optical fiber due to the twist and tension of the cable. Continue inspection and cleaning work. The observation data is shown in FIG. The optical attenuation meter shows the loss along the optical fiber and includes noise at the connectors at both ends. It is possible to observe where the abnormality has occurred during that time. Although the difference between the two ends is a loss, it is stable at approximately 4 dB calculated by the personal computer and recorded with respect to the working time.

[0013]

According to the present invention, in a composite optical power cable for feeding power and transmitting an optical signal to a moving object, a wire in which a bundle of aramid fibers (a high-strength material of a polymer) coated with resin is twisted at the center and a feeding cable and an optical fiber cable are provided outside the wire. If at least one optical fiber cable is inserted and an optical composite power cable connected to a moving body with a rubber or plastic sheath is used, bending, ironing, and pulling can be performed in the same manner as the cable of the comparative example having two layers of armor. In contrast, it was confirmed as shown in Table 1 that a cable having no light attenuation was produced and that the occurrence of torsion torque due to the tensile load was small.

[0014]

[Table 1]

In addition, the cantilever bending test shown in FIG. 5 proves that the present cable has excellent flexibility. Further, since aramid wire is commercially available and can be easily obtained as compared with FRP tension members, the cost of the entire cable is low. Therefore, it has been proved that the cable is the most inexpensive and easy-to-make cable when viewed from the side of a moving body such as a robot. In addition, in the method of operating the mobile unit by feeding the optical signal and transmitting the optical signal to the mobile unit using the optical composite power cable, if the use method is characterized in that the transmission loss characteristics of the optical fiber cable are constantly monitored, the pull-back operation is started and It can be understood that the amount of attenuation is generated as shown in FIG. 3 corresponding to the root of the robot and the like, and as a result, the rise of the abnormality can be quickly detected, the torsion can be adjusted, and the cable life has been significantly extended.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a sectional view of an optical composite power cable according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a cross-sectional view of a comparative example in which a conventional optical composite power cable is improved.

FIG. 3 is a transmission loss monitoring system diagram of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is an embodiment of transmission loss monitoring data of the present invention.

FIG. 5: Method and results of the flexibility evaluation test

FIG. 6 is a sectional view of a conventional example of an optical composite power cable.

FIG. 7 is an explanatory view of the arrangement of water channels and machines.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 core 2 aramid fiber wire 3 polyethylene layer 4 foamed polyethylene 11 optical fiber 12 polyethylene coating 13 optical fiber cable 14 sheath 15 power cable 16 FRP tension member 17 spacer 18 outer sheath 19 moving body (inspection and cleaning robot) 20 water channel 21 winder 22 roller 23 Cable bundle

 ────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continuing on the front page (72) Inventor Shuji Ota 3-2-222 Nakanoshima, Kita-ku, Osaka-shi Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc. (72) Inventor Kazuhiro Arikawa 3-2-2, Nakanoshima, Kita-ku, Osaka-Kansai Electric Power Co., Ltd. (72) Inventor: Masashi Nakayama 3-1-1, Higashikawasaki-cho, Chuo-ku, Kobe-shi, Hyogo Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd.Kobe Plant (72) Inventor: Toyohiko Sakaguchi 2-6-1 Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo Old Kawa Electric Industry Co., Ltd.

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. An optical composite power cable for feeding power and transmitting an optical signal to a moving body, twisting a wire in which a high-strength polymer fiber bundle coated with a resin is solidified at the center and twisting a power feeding cable and an optical fiber cable on the outside thereof. An optical composite power cable that contains more than one optical fiber cable and is connected to a moving object with a rubber or plastic sheath. 2. A method for operating a mobile unit by feeding and supplying an optical signal to the mobile unit using an optical composite power cable, wherein the transmission loss characteristic of the optical fiber cable is constantly monitored and used. 3. When a power supply and an optical signal are sent to a mobile unit using the optical composite power cable according to claim 1, the mobile unit is operated and the mobile unit is rotated in an abnormal state while monitoring the transmission characteristics of the optical fiber cable in the inner layer. To recover the transmission characteristics and operate the mobile object.