The Draka BendBright-Elite bendable fiber from Draka Communications Americas completed and passed a series of independent lab testing in August, the company says. That testing showed the singlemode bendable fiber can tolerate bends as small as 5mm while achieving attenuation values less than 0.1 dB. BendBright-Elite fiber is included in a number of Draka products.
Draka reports that BendBright-Elite complies with ITU G.657 A1, A2, B2 and B3, which the company said means "it delivers the highest level of bend performance while remaining backwards compatibility with legacy singlemode fiber." Marketing manager Jack Rosko added, "Draka cables containing BendBright-Elite fiber can tolerate as many as one hundred fifty 90-degree bends and 500 crown staples without experiencing power loss greater than 0.1 dB. This level of performance makes our new fiber a perfect application for multiple dwelling units, central offices, enterprises and retail centers where cables will be exposed to difficult installation routes or congestion of existing cables."
The BendBright line of bendable fiber was introduced in 2002 and now includes four versions of bend-insenstive fiber spanning singlemode and multimode. According to Draka, BendBright offers a 10x improvement in bend resistance versus standard singlemode fiber; BendBright-XS provides a 7.5mm bend radius; BendBright-Elite, the fiber that underwent the indepedent testing in August, provides a 5mm bend radius; and MaxCap-BB OM3 and OM4 are bend-insensitive multimode fibers.
