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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 February 2011
Many of the broken fibers in optical connectors, especially those that seem to occur over time without apparent provocation are found in the ferrule at the transition from entry cone to alignment capillary. This paper contends that many such breaks are due to local stresses caused by debris or some other relatively rigid imperfection in the transition neighborhood. Stress estimates from beam theory and from a finite-element model are presented along with some indirect experimental observations supporting the contention.