Ropes

The exceptional strength and light-weight of Dyneema® fibers allow for the manufacturing of ropes with very special characteristics. Successful applications include mooring and towing lines, offshore positioning ropes, yachting lines, commercial fishing ropes and roundslings and arborist lines. The Dyneema® grades used for ropes are SK60, SK65, SK75 and SK78.

A rope made with Dyneema® is as strong as a wire rope, with the same diameter but only about 10% of the weight per meter. A new rope made with Dyneema® has a low elongation to break of approx. 6%, falling to 3.5% in use. As the elongation decreases, the breaking strength of the rope increases by approx. 10%, as load-sharing between the Dyneema® fibers improves. This results in much less backlash in the event of failure. Building staggered failure into the rope can reduce this even further or eliminate it altogether.

Dyneema®,  with a specific density of less than one, has a neutral buoyancy. It also outperforms steel and other synthetic rope materials in terms of both tension-tension fatigue and bending-bending fatigue.

The properties of Dyneema® are not impaired by sea water and the ropes’ breaking strength remains constant in wet or dry conditions. These ropes have good UV resistance, and are unaffected by oil or commonly used chemicals. They also show good abrasion resistance. A mantle construction to protect the rope is advisable in some cases.

Dyneema® fiber is compatible with all commonly used ropemaking techniques, and has been tested in the following constructions:

• Wire-laid and semi-parallel constructions: These provide the best balance between strength and bending-bending fatigue. Both sockets and splices can be used for terminations.
• 8-strand plaited ropes: These are mainly used for applications such as towing and mooring, as this construction is the most resistant to mechanical damage. These ropes can be easily spliced.
• 12-strand braided ropes: In some applications this construction performs even better than the 8-strand plaited rope.
• Braided ropes: These are the first choice for yachting ropes, winch lines and other smaller ropes. The ropes can be covered with another braid and the terminations can be splices or sockets.

Dyneema® fiber is easy to process. In order to maintain the high tenacity and low elongation, whatever the rope construction, the Dyneema® fiber must be held under constant tension and differences in path length should be avoided during processing. The contact points are very important: these should be hard, with a surface like a skin of an orange. They should preferably be rolling, and should not be worn.

Our expert application engineers and state-of-the-art Technicum laboratory are available to support you in identifying, developing or processing the best rope made with Dyneema® application for you, based on your needs and our extensive research. We are also able to conduct a system cost analysis for almost all applications, helping you to identify the benefits of Dyneema® for your business.