| 摘要 |
<p>An armoured sleeve 1 for protecting optical fibres 12 underwater, and a method of manufacture and use. The sleeve has a protective outer layer 18 surrounding a polymeric inner layer (17, fig 2). The inner layer defines an elongate conduit 16 for holding the optical fibres and the outer layer has a series of discrete non-metallic beads 20 in proximity to one another, where each bead has an aperture (22, fig 2) for the conduit. The beads may be glass, moveable relative to one another, and water may flow between them. The beads may have separate identical halves (30, 32, fig 3a) with flat or clipping tongue and groove abutting surfaces (34, 34, fig 3a). There may be an elastomeric outer sheath 26 conforming to the undulating external shape 28 of the beads, and may hold the bead segments together. In another aspect of the invention, the method relates to adjacent non-connected beads.</p> |
