1. Introduction
The mooring system is an indispensable system of the offshore floating platform. For deep-water mooring systems, taut mooring has numerous merits, including adaptability to deep water and ultra-deep-water environments, the light weight of the mooring rope, smaller mooring radius, greater ability to maintain platform stability, easy installation and transportation, and lower costs. Polyester ropes have been widely used as taut mooring lines since 1997 because of their excellent performance and low cost in deep waters [
1]. During their service life, polyester ropes are incessantly subjected to dynamic loads induced by wave and platform motions.
The tensile properties of synthetic fiber materials are considered to be intermediate between the ideal elastic fixation and the ideal viscous liquid, with both elastic and viscous properties. The nonlinear tensile relationship of synthetic fiber ropes is determined by a number of factors, for example, the braided structure, fiber material, load type, load history, temperature, etc. Li et al. [
2] studied the effect of nonlinear mooring line stiffness on offshore floating platforms, mainly analyzing the effect on the motion response and tension variation of different mooring systems. The results show that the effect of nonlinear mooring line stiffness on the taut-leg mooring system is greater than that of the suspension chain line mooring system when synthetic fiber rope is used. Del Vecchio et al. [
3] considered the average value, amplitude, and frequency of dynamic loads on dynamic stiffness and summarized an empirical formula. Fernandes et al. [
4] performed full-scale tests on a 5-inch diameter polyester mooring rope and found that frequency had a relatively small effect on dynamic stiffness, while the influences of the average value and amplitude of the load were relatively obvious. Casey et al. [
5] studied the stiffness characteristics of polyester ropes for breaking loads of 600 to 1000 tons; the effect of amplitude on dynamic stiffness was negligible at low strain amplitudes below 0.3%, while it was found that it should not be neglected at high strain amplitudes of about 0.6%. Liu et al. [
6] studied the nonlinear behavior of aramid, polyester, and high modulus polyethylene (HMPE) ropes under cyclic loading. An empirical formula was also proposed, taking into account the effects of average load, strain amplitude, and the number of loading cycles. In the experiment of Bosman et al. [
7], the authors demonstrated that the maximum error resulting from extrapolating the sub-cord results to full-size performance should be 2%. It is possible to infer the modulus results obtained from the sub-rope test to the full-size modulus; thus, the experiment can be conducted using sub-ropes instead of ropes, making the experiment safer and more accessible. Francois et al. [
8] performed some tests on sub-ropes at full-scale and proved the reliability of experiments with sub-ropes. Li et al. [
9] selected three different structures and diameters of high-modulus polyethylene fiber ropes. A comprehensive experimental study of the nonlinear dynamic stiffness of fiber ropes under long-term cyclic loading was conducted, and the authors proposed a set of empirical expressions considering the braided structure, diameter, and output load conditions. Xu et al. [
10] studied the mechanical properties of synthetic fiber ropes. Static tensile tests and cyclic loading tests were conducted, respectively. An empirical formula for the dynamic stiffness of the synthetic fiber rope considering the average load, load amplitude, and number of cycles was proposed. Further, they applied the extended Kalman filter to identify the parameters of the proposed empirical expressions. The performance of the extended Kalman filter in the parameter identification of the empirical expressions for dynamic stiffness was also investigated. Sry et al. [
11] conducted impact load tests on polyethylene ropes, and the spring-damper model was used to estimate and evaluate the tensile properties in the tests. The calculated results of the spring-damper model were in good agreement with the experimental data.
The previous studies focused on the influence of load type or load duration on the mechanical properties of synthetic fiber ropes, while research on the effect of temperature on the tensile properties of synthetic fiber ropes is relatively rare. Bottorff et al. [
12] deduced a model for calculating transient rope temperature using volumetric heat generation, radial conduction, and surface convection, and established a tensile model with integral heat transfer components. Vlasblom et al. [
13] studied the fatigue life of high-modulus polyethylene ropes and investigated the effect of different temperatures and different cycles on the permanent elongation of the rope. Further, a rope temperature model based on hysteresis, axial slip, and the strand-to-strand motion was developed and established for experimental validation. Ning et al. [
14] studied the cause of heat generation in the fiber rope and the dynamic process of heat accumulation during the cyclic bending over sheave process on the pulley. They experimentally demonstrated the thermal damage of braided synthetic fiber ropes during bending. Humeau et al. [
15] studied the effect of water on the tensile properties of polyamide fibers at different temperatures and humidity. The results show that, although the effect of moisture on the short-term tensile behavior is small, it has a significant impact on the long-term tensile behavior. The authors also modeled creep under different humidity conditions.
In summary, it has been proved that temperature has a noticeable effect on creep properties, while its dependence on dynamic stiffness has not been well studied. Further, existing empirical formulas do not provide a proper temperature range for application, although the environmental temperature is different due to working conditions and water depth. Therefore, it is meaningful to study the influence of temperature on the dynamic stiffness of synthetic fiber rope. To this end, an experimental study is proposed in this paper, mainly to investigate the effects of the average, amplitude, and period of dynamic load on rope stiffness at different temperatures. Three temperature conditions close to the actual situation were selected, after which the experimental data were analyzed to further refine the empirical formula.
This paper is organized as follows.
Section 2 describes the test device and the polyester rope used in the experiment and describes the testing process and conditions.
Section 3 performs a preliminary analysis of the experimental results and compares the tensile characteristics under different temperatures and load conditions.
Section 4 calculates the dynamic stiffness for this experiment. The effect of the average value, amplitude, and period of dynamic load on dynamic stiffness at different temperatures is analyzed, and the effect of temperature on the dynamic stiffness of polyester rope is summarized.
Section 5 fits all the data to obtain an empirical equation for dynamic stiffness that contains the temperature, humidity, load average, load amplitude, and the number of cycles, and this is verified by repeated experiments at different temperatures. Finally, the conclusions are presented in
Section 6.
2. Experiment Description
The polyester rope selected for the experiment was designed according to the sub-rope of a mooring line in Deep Sea No.1 semi-submersible production oil storage platform and manufactured by Zhejiang Four Brothers Rope Co., Ltd. (Taizhou, China). The whole polyester rope comprised twelve-strand sub-ropes arranged in parallel. For the polyester ropes with parallel construction, the dynamic stiffness test can be conducted with their sub-rope, as concluded in Francois et al. [
8]. The sub-rope used for the present test was single-braid-construction rope, which consisted of 12 strands of braided rope, as shown in
Figure 1. The designed minimum breaking load was 400 kN, and the radius was 30 mm. All samples were newly produced.
The maximum pulling load of the test bench was 500 kN, and the maximum relative error of the indication value was 0.3%. The free end of the tensioner can carry out the unidirectional generation of static load or simple harmonic motion to generate dynamic load. The rate of elongation was recorded by using a displacement transducer and extensometer at the free end every 0.45 s on average. In the middle of the tension machine was set a controlled thermostat of 1470 mm in length and a 100 mm capacity in width. The controllable temperature range of the thermostat was 10 °C~40 °C, and this was measured by a thermometer in real time. The thermostat is shown in
Figure 2.
Water temperatures around the world generally range from −2 °C to 30 °C, and more than half of the entire ocean has an average annual water temperature of over 20 °C. Considering the actual marine environment, the environmental conditions of the rope house constantly change with the weather temperature. This paper on the effects of a combination of temperature and humidity on the dynamic stiffness of rope is very meaningful. Therefore, the temperatures selected for the following two experiments were 20 °C, 30 °C, and 40 °C.
The first test conducted in this study was the breakage test for measuring the minimum breaking load at different temperature conditions. In each temperature environment, polyester rope was used for the test, which followed the below procedures:
(1) Adjust the temperature to the specified temperature.
(2) Increase the load to 60 kN at a rate of 24 kN/min and keep the load for 5 min after reaching 60 kN.
(3) Apply cyclic load with the mean value of 60 kN, amplitude of 30 kN, and rate of 200 mm/min per minute for 30 cycles.
(4) Reduce the load to 60 KN and record the distance between the two ends of the tensioner.
(5) Quickly move the rope out of the controlled thermostat for breaking. Perform breakage and record the load size of the breakage.
The following experiment is the dynamic stiffness test under cyclic load, where the minimum breaking load was measured by the upper breaking load. The temperature condition selected was the same as in the previous experiment. In each temperature environment, polyester rope was used for the test. The dynamic stiffness tests followed the below procedures:
(a) After mounting each sample, apply a pre-tension of 2% minimum breaking strength (MBS).
(b) Increase the load to 45% MBS at a rate of 200 mm/min and hold the load for 3 h after reaching 45% MBS.
(c)–(h) Apply dynamic loads with different conditions, as shown in
Figure 3.
(i) After unloading the sample to 2% MBS, apply a load of 20% MBS until it breaks, and record the breaking load and breaking position under each working condition.
The relationship between load and time in steps (b)–(h) is shown in
Figure 3 below, where only the average load differed for steps (c), (d) and (e), and only the magnitude of the load differed for steps (c), (f) and (g), while step (g) and (h) only differed in frequency. Step (i) is the unloading and breaking process. The initial lengths recorded by the experimental extensometer for the four temperatures are shown in
Table 1, where all the recorded lengths were smaller than the thermostat.
5. Regression Analysis
The experiments showed that the average value and amplitude of dynamic load mainly affected the dynamic stiffness of the polyester ropes. At the same time, due to the time-varying characteristics of synthetic fiber rope, as the number of cycles of dynamic load increased, the stiffness of the rope also increased, and finally, tended to a fixed value. Considering the influence of average value, amplitude, and number of cycles for dynamic load, an empirical expression for the dimensionless dynamic stiffness
Kr was established, referring to the dynamic stiffness expressions established by Liu et al. [
6].
where
Lm is the ratio of tension to minimum breaking load in the percentage of the minimum breaking strength MBS;
La is the ratio of load amplitude to the minimum breaking load in the percentage of the minimum breaking strength MBS, and
N is the number of cycles. α is the coefficient of the effect of the rope material on the dynamic stiffness;
β is the coefficient of the effect of the average tension
Lm on the dynamic stiffness;
γ is the coefficient of the effect of the strain amplitude
La on the dynamic stiffness. The last term,
δe
−0.005N, is related to the trend of the same dynamic load; with the increase in the number of cycles
N,
δe
−0.005N gradually tends to zero. First, the Levenberg–Marquardt optimization algorithm was used to fit the data to obtain the coefficients of the three temperatures in all cases.
α,
β, and
γ are shown in
Table 4.
Since the dynamic stiffness variation rates at different temperatures and different stages were different, the x-factors for different cases were obtained separately and weighted by coefficients 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, and 0.2. as shown in
Table 5. The relative error Err is written as follows:
Kre denotes the predicting value obtained by the proposed empirical expression in Equation (5), and Kr0 represents the experimental results.
First, as shown in
Figure 18, the experimental result and predicted values and the relative error Err were used to verify the validity and feasibility of the formula. The results confirm that the trend of this formula is consistent with the trend of the experimental results in most cases. The current empirical model is consistent with the real experimental results. The error for the first ten cycles was around ±5% due to variations in the load conditions. The relative error was within ±2.5% as the number of cycles increased.
Further, combined with the previous laws, temperature and humidity had an effect on the temperature, mainly on the initial modulus of the rope, which affected the dynamic stiffness. As the temperature and humidity increased, the initial modulus decreased, leading to a decrease in the dynamic stiffness. Moreover, because humidity and temperature were linearly related to the initial modulus, after introducing the variables of temperature and humidity, a comprehensive model was proposed basis on Equation (5).
where
α0,
β0,
γ0, are related to rope structure and reference temperature;
δ is taken as the average of three temperature-weighted averages; and
c1,
c2,
c3 are polynomials containing temperature
T and humidity
which are given in Equations (6)–(8):
where
T0 and
are the corresponding reference temperature and reference humidity,
T and
represent the actual temperature and actual humidity, the unit of temperature is K and the unit of humidity is %RH.
a1,
a2, and
a3 are the temperature influence coefficients, and b
1, b
2, and b
3 are the influence coefficients of humidity. This paper set a reference temperature of 303 K and humidity of 52.19% RH. The correlation coefficients were calculated by combining them with
Table 4, as shown in
Table 6.
By comparing the different coefficients of the integrated model, it could be found that humidity had a greater effect on the load amplitude influence factor than temperature, while for the average load influence factor, there was little difference between the two. This is because the greater the amplitude, the greater the gap between the yarns of the sub-ropes in the stretching process of polyester rope, and the greater the effect on it of the moisture in the air.
Experiments with different average loads under 25 °C were carried out under the same conditions when the humidity in the thermostat was 69.20% RH, and the empirical formula for the dynamic stiffness of the polyester rope, in this case, was calculated according to the integrated model obtained as follows:
The results for the comparison of the empirical formulas with the experimental results are shown in
Figure 19. The relative error of the predicted values was greater than ±5% in the first ten cycles and stayed within ±2.5% as the cycle progressed, which was consistent with the previous error range. This proves the accuracy and applicability of the integrated model.
6. Conclusions
In this paper, 20 °C, 30 °C, and 40 °C were chosen as the three temperature points to study the effect of temperature on dynamic stiffness under different loading conditions. Based on the experimental results, a comprehensive model was proposed using a regression analysis to describe the impact of temperature, humidity, and dynamic cyclic load on dynamic stiffness. An identical experiment was conducted at 25 °C to validate the integrated model, and the predicted values were in good agreement with the experimental results, which proved the accuracy and applicability of the integrated model.
At the same time, the experiment showed that the average load and load amplitude for polyester rope dynamic stiffness had the biggest influence, and with the temperature and humidity changes, this influence factor also changed. Further, the frequency of influence of the polyester rope dynamic stiffness was very small and could be neglected, and with the temperature change, this influence factor change could also be neglected. In addition, the maximum dynamic stiffness at 30 °C was greater than the maximum dynamic stiffness at 20 °C and 40 °C. This is because the stiffness decreased with an increase in temperature and with increasing humidity. However, the humidity decreased with the increasing temperature in a closed temperature-controlled chamber, which led to a compromise at 30 °C. The experimental results in this paper are in good agreement with the conclusion. By comparing the different coefficients of the integrated model, it could be found that humidity had a greater effect on the influence factor of load amplitude than temperature, and there was little difference between the two for the influence factor of average load.