COMPOSITE CABLES FOR BRIDGES AND OTHER STRUCTURES

The authors' company have actively pursued the development of lighweight cables based on composite materials aimed at structural applications. This paper describes pertinent aspects of the development work on carbon fibre cables and presents performance and design data to demonstrate the advantages they have over steel cables. In particular, they possess vastly superior strength and stiffness to weight ratios, tension fatigue performance and resistance to creep. The 45mm diameter carbon fibre cable assemblies designed for a demonstrator footbridge are also described with reference to some of the key issues related to the manufacture. (A) For the covering abstract see ITRD E104933.