Fibre Taut
Fibre Taut – Fibre Ropes for Taut Mooring Lines for Marine Energy Converters
The objective of the project is to obtain knowledge of the applicability of fibre ropes in Marine Energy Converters (MEC), both in laboratory and sea conditions.
To achieve this, a series of project development objectives are presented below:
-
Perform tests of the fibre ropes in two environments, one in real, open water conditions and other in a control environment in the laboratory.
-
Determine strength limits and the stiffness and damping properties of fibre ropes with cycling at different loads.
-
Develop a base line numerical model of the mooring system and rope behaviour based on the rope characteristics.
-
Validate the model with real data: meta-ocean conditions and measured loads at sea.
-
Verify the applicability of fibre ropes for marine energy converter applications.
-
In the long-term we hope to develop cost-effective fibre rope taut mooring lines for deepwater applications for the emerging MEC industry. This would provide a new market for rope manufacturers and help advance the MEC industry further into the deeper and more energetic wave environments.
-
Contribution to the improvement of the correlation between accelerated laboratory tests and real, offshore environment test.
-
Promotion of communication and dissemination of findings among European centres and companies.
Partners: WireCo WorldGroup (Lankhorst-Euronete Portugal) and Fundación Centro Tecnológico de Componentes – CTC (Spain)
This project has received support from MARINET, a European Community – Research Infrastructure Action under the FP7 “Capacities” Specific Programme.
