Durability of fibre ropes for deep sea handling operations

P. Davies (1) , Nicolas Lacotte , G. Kibsgard , R. Craig , D. Cannell , S. François , O. Lodeho , K. Konate , S. Mills , M. François , A.-L. Defoy , Damien Durville (2) , Do Vu Thanh (2) , J. Gilmore , D. Sherman

1 LIMATB - Laboratoire d'Ingénierie des Matériaux de Bretagne
2 MSSMat - Laboratoire de mécanique des sols, structures et matériaux

This paper describes work performed within a Joint Industry Project aiming to evaluate the lifetime of deep sea handling ropes. Various HMPE (High Modulus Polyethylene) fiber ropes, with and without coatings, have been studied under both tensile and cyclic bend over sheave (CBOS) loading. A large test program has enabled both tension-cycle to failure and empirical expressions for residual strength after cycling to be determined. A special device as then developed to apply a known couple to the sheave, allowing both dynamic friction measurements to be made and the influence of applied couple on cycles to failure to be measured. These experimental data were used in the development of a numerical model which can be used to study rope and sheave parameters.

Domaines: Mécanique des structures [physics.class-ph]; Mécanique des structures [physics.class-ph]; Mécanique des matériaux [physics.class-ph]; Mécanique des matériaux [physics.class-ph]

P. Davies, Nicolas Lacotte, G. Kibsgard, R. Craig, D. Cannell, et al.. Durability of fibre ropes for deep sea handling operations. 32nd International Conference on Ocean, Offshore and Arctic Engineering, OMAE2013, Jun 2013, Nantes, France. ⟨10.1115/OMAE2013-11332⟩. ⟨hal-00855352⟩