Plastic optical fiber weaving

Uses of luminous optical fiber fabric

Several textile manufacturers have started to integrate light optical fiber into their textiles naturally. If the first tests were successful on clothing, the first bright textiles were produced for interior fittings, hotel decoration or for marketing at points of sale.

Since then, these luminous fabrics have developed for a number of uses far removed from the "designer and decorative luminous fabric", particularly in the medical field. Today there are several medical applications such as the treatment of jaundice in infants or the treatment against pre-cancerous skin bonds which require the use of a luminous tissue in a particular wavelength.

Implementation of luminous optical fiber weaving

Weaving approach

• During the manufacturing the textile

This technique consists in controlling the armor and the tension of the warp threads. It makes a textile bright during its manufacture with the use of an illuminating optical fiber at the end of the fiber installed in the weft thread. The tension of the warp threads on the weft threads (the optical fiber) allows bending the optical fiber and to control its light output by microbending. This weaving approach is complex because it consists in using a mixture of satin weaves which have the particularity of concealing tying stitches and therefore of presenting smooth surfaces

Choice of luminous optic fiber

In the end, a bare fiber with a diameter of0.5mm represents a good compromise between light effect and flexibility forluminous textiles.

First rules to respect

The weaving process and the storage of thetextile must not damage the optical qualities of the fiber. In all these operations, abrasive materials and cutting parts can damage the fiber. Great attention will be paid to cleaning, transport, the pieces of fabric must bewell protected to avoid damage to the fiber.

Fiber density choice

The fiber density will depend on the type of use, making it possible to meet a requirement such as the power radiated on thesurface, on the contrary, is a cost constraint.

The higher the density of fibers for a given diameter, the more the power of electromagnetic radiation per unit area can be optimized. This quantity is called the irradiance and is expressed in W / m2;for a luminous fabric it is expressed in mW / cm2.

Furthermore, this density of fibers directly impacts the cost of the final solution. Indeed there is the price of fiber but it remains almost marginal versus the cost of mounting connectors and the implementation of light sources. The number of collectors and light sources isdirectly correlated to the fiber diameter and their fiber density per cm2.

In a medical use such as for example the treatment of jaundice in infants or the treatment against pre-cancerous cutaneous connections, one must expose a part of the patient's body on aluminous tissue with a homogeneous diffusion of light over a length of specificwave over the entire surface. We will favor the density of fibers on luminous fabrics whose surfaces do not exceed a few tens of dm2 as shown by this luminous fabric for the treatment of actinic keratosis.

For a luminous textile for decorative purposes,the manufacturer will have to pay attention to the final cost. This will become all the more true for large areas larger than 1 m2. To decrease the density offibers without this being apparent, there are possible tricks.

The two photos below show that a fabric with a low density of optical fibers can have an interesting rendering whether it is lit or not. When not lit, optical fibers are not visible due to their low density.

The other approach to reducing the quantity offibers is not to weave the whole of optical fiber but to select one or more repeating pattern (s). The attached photo shows a curtain with a repeated pattern made of bright optical fiber.