Research on Titanium Wire Rope for Marine Use

Titanium and its alloys have favorably high strength, good fatigue life, and excellent corrosion resistance. Also, they are lightweight and nonmagnetic. Because of these attractive properties, the Navy had several titanium wire ropes fabricated for testing purposes. The first one about 10 yr ago, the last one about 5 yr ago. These wire ropes were tensile and fatigue tested by several Navy laboratories. On the basis of fatigue test performance, however, they all were deemed unacceptable for their intended use. In this paper, the titanium wire ropes and their tests are briefly described. In addition, the test results are summarized and examined in terms of the problems that plague any future development of a marine titanium wire rope. One such problem concerns the inherently poor resistance of titanium alloys to wear and galling in the presence of high-abrasion-causing loads. Another concerns the use of good quality titanium wire to fabricate rope.