Light transmission for polymer fibers using skew and meridional rays

This dissertation is concerned with the development of a light transmission model for polymer optical fibers having application in hybrid solar lighting (HSL) systems. Conceptually, the HSL system consists of a solar collector/receiver that focuses concentrated visible solar light onto a polymer optical fiber (up to 10-m-long) that transports the solar light to an interior space. For this study, the polymer optical fiber is a large-core (0.2-40 mm diameter) plastic optical fiber (POF) comprised of various lengths of straight and bent sections. Although there has been extensive research on the transmission of monochromatic light through optical fibers for the communications industry, there are relatively few publications for visible light transmission through POFs. These publications were critically reviewed in this research. It is shown that the light transmission can be described with either skew or meridional rays. For each ray type, the HSL system light transmission was determined as a function of fiber geometrical properties (core and cladding radii, bend radius, bend angle, and fiber length) and optical properties (core and clad refractive indices, absorption and scattering coefficients, core-clad rms roughness height, and core-clad interface defects loss coefficient). To do this, first, models were developed for separate straight and bent sections for multiple skew and meridional rays. Second, the straight and bent models were combined into a FORTRAN simulation program for an arbitrary fiber with a combination of arbitrary straight and bent sections. The input condition of the rays (arrangement of rays, incident angle, and intensity profile) is user-defined. Third, the simulation results were experimentally validated using two different POFs, twelve configurations of straight and bent fiber subsystems, and two ray types. These experimental comparisons show that the transmission model using meridional rays is slightly better than that with the skew rays. But the skew ray model predicted a higher transmission through the bent sections for angular uniform and angular reverse Gaussian intensity profiles. However, both ray types predicted the experimental light transmission to within +/-10%. A series of subsystems-level parametric sensitivity analyses has been included to indicate the direction of the light transmission change with the increase or decrease of one parameter around an operational point. It is shown that Rayleigh scattering, core-cladding interface roughness, interface defects, and bulk absorption are the dominate loss mechanisms on the straight section. It is hoped that the present model will eventually be used to aid in the design of HSL systems.