Characteristics of steel hybrid ropes with UHMWPE fibre core and their applications

This paper introduces new low weight hybrid rope concepts by combining steel wire and UHMWPE fibre. These novel hybrid ropes result in enhanced strength and bending performance compared to steel wire rope (SWR) with independent wire rope core (IWRC) or low modulus fibre core (FC) of equivalent constructions. In this worle. specifIC researdl on axial stiffness of high modulus hybrid ropes (HMHR) is presented with proposed analytical solu~on. Also end fitting requirements needed to adlieve the maximum breaking load of the new ropes are disclosed. Finally the authors discuss the performance of these ropes at laboratory wor1c.ing conditions and address addi~onal efforts that need to be considered before these ropes can be validated for real applications.