Metallic and composite cables: a brief review

Abstract

For cable-moored offshore tension-lag platforms in ultra-deep waters (2000 m), the usage of metallic cables is impractical, making carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) natural substitutes. CFRP cables have been applied in different situations, such as in cable-stayed bridges, in order to take advantage of its outstanding fatigue behaviour, higher specific stiffness and strength, and good corrosion resistance. However, there are not much experimental data available in the literature for these cables and theoretical solutions still need to be further developed. On the other hand, several theoretical approaches have already been developed for isotropic (metallic) cables, some of them with many simplifications nonetheless still showing good agreement compared to experimental data. On this context, this paper aims to report recent advances on composite cables, comparing previous research results on both composite and isotropic cables on the experimental, analytical and numerical fields.