Experimental–numerical studies of failure behavior of PLC optical splitters under uniaxial tensile loading

This work presents an experimental and numerical study of the failure behavior of planar lightwave circuit (PLC) optical splitters under uniaxial tensile loading. Based on the experimental results, the specific fracture position, ultimate failure load (Pm), failure mode and load-displacement behavior of the PLC optical splitter under uniaxial tensile loading were determined. In order to numerically simulate the real fracture behavior and stress distribution of adhesively bonded joints, a three-dimensional (3-D) explicit finite element analysis method based on material constitutive and tiebreak contact algorithm was proposed, which treats cohesive failure and adhesive/interfacial failure separately. The Pm predicted by the numerical simulation agrees well with the experimentally obtained Pm with a relative error of ∼4.3%, and the predicted failure mode is also similar to the experimentally observed mixed failure mode, which proves the accuracy and rationality of the adopted finite element method and model. This study can provide useful references for the reliability design and optimization of PLC optical splitters.