EFFECTS OF BENDING STIFFNESS IN TOW AND SALVAGE CABLES

A commonly accepted physical model of a tow or a salvage cable is that of a nonlinear inextensible string. The report considers the effects of the small amount of bending stiffness that such cables are known to possess. Intuitively, we should suspect that such effects will be considerable in the neighborhood of a concentrated loading such as that arising due to a fitting. Since many cables break in the neighborhood of fittings, a rational analysis of the critical state of stress demands the incorporation of the cable bending stiffness. The results predict significant local differences in the states of stress of a cable without stiffness and a cable with stiffness. Furthermore, these differences are independent of the amount of bending stiffness. Thus, even in the limit of zero bending stiffness these differences remain undiminished. The region of the cable over which they act approaches zero in the limit of vanishing bending stiffness. From an engineering point of view, the most important difference for a cable with stiffness might be that the direction of the principal stress changes dramatically with a change in position within a region of a concentrated loading. This fact could be of considerable importance for cables since the strength characteristics of cables are extremely direction dependent. Also, there are surfaces in the cable across which a compressive force must be transmitted in cables with small amounts of bending stiffness. (Author)

• Corporate Authors:

  Catholic University of America

  Institute of Ocean Science and Engineering
  Washington, DC  United States  20017
• Authors:
  • McCoy, J J
• Publication Date: 1971-1

Media Info

• Pagination: 52 p.

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Bending; Cables; Dynamics; Failure; Stiffness; Towing devices
• Old TRIS Terms: Cable bending stiffness; Cable dynamics; Towing cables
• Subject Areas: Marine Transportation; Materials;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00019453
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: National Technical Information Service
• Report/Paper Numbers: 71-2
• Contract Numbers: N00014-68A-0506-0001
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Jun 30 1973 12:00AM