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. •A newly modified dimension-stable HMPE rope is investigated under spooling test on the multilayer winch drum.•Stress assessment and deformation resistance of former and substitution fibre rope is compared.•A modified winding model is provided to estimate the deformation of rope winding.•A novel procedure of rope spooling is proposed to evaluate the performance of rope and adjust spooling adaptability.