TY - JOUR A1 - Rasmussen, H. K. A1 - Fasano, A. A1 - Stajanca, Pavol A1 - Woyessa, G. A1 - Schukar, Marcus A1 - Bang, O. T1 - Mechanical characterization of drawn Zeonex, Topas, polycarbonate and PMMA microstructured polymer optical fibres N2 - The mechanical stress-strain behaviour of polymer optical fibres (POFs) drawn from various materials was measured, both before and after temperature annealing of the POFs. The POFs were drawn from PMMA (GEHR), Zeonex (480R), PC (Makrolon LED2245) and two different grades of Topas (8007S-04 and 5013S-04). With fibre drawing stresses at or above the elastic (uniaxial extensional) plateau modulus, the polymer chains in the POFs have a high degree of alignment, which has a large impact on fibre mechanical behaviour. The testing was performed at straining rates ranging from 0.011%/s, to 1.1%/s for the un-annealed fibres and a straining rate of 1.1%/s for the annealed ones. The elastic modulus of the tested POFs showed no sensitivity toward variation of straining rate. In the case of Topas 5013S-04 and PMMA, the producer-reported values are the same as the one obtained here for the POFs both before and after annealing. The drawn POFs made of Zeonex, PC, and Topas 8007S-04 exhibit larger elastic modulus than the respective materials in the bulk form. The elastic modulus of these fibres is reduced upon annealing by 10-15%, but still remains above the producer-reported values for the bulk polymers. In the nonlinear elastic region, only the PC POF is statistically unaffected by the changes in the straining rate, while Topas 8007S-04 POF shows insensitivity to the straining rate until 3% strain. All other changes affect the stress-strain curves. The annealing flattens all stress-strain curves, making the fibres more sensitive to yield. KW - Polymer optical fibres KW - Mechanical characterization KW - Stree-strain curve KW - PMMA KW - Topas KW - Polycarbonate KW - Zeonex PY - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-464163 SN - 2159-3930 VL - 8 IS - 11 SP - 3600 EP - 3614 PB - Optical Society of America CY - Washington, DC AN - OPUS4-46416 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -