Experimental evaluation of dimension-stable synthetic fibre rope under investigation of spooling test on the multilayer winch drum

Synthetic fibre rope has been a promising solution in ocean exploring applications benefiting from its excellent mechanical properties and high-strength lightweight. However, spooling on the multilayer winch with fibre rope was noticed as a severe problem as a consequence of its nonlinear lateral stiffness property. Substantially increased layers of winding packages caused the deformation of rope. Therefore, a modified rope evolved from applications in fisheries with tight dimensional stability and resistance to deformation under compression is seen as an alternative selection. In this research, characteristics of a 24 mm high module polyethylene (HMPE) dimension-stable marine handling rope subjected to various tension are investigated by a series of full-scale spooling experimental tests on a specially designed test winch at a diameter ratio of D/d = 600/24. The results compared with another spooling experiment conducted in 2021 using an HMPE rope without a core but at the same D/d ratio reveal that the modified rope could induce greater loads than the former. Besides, analytical and numerical calculations will be discussed to assess the accuracy of experimental measurements. Further, a novel winding model is proposed to estimate the deformation of rope shape, evaluate the performance of rope winding and adjust rope spooling adaptability.