Cable fatigue test bench

The University Gustave Eiffel cable fatigue test bench allows realizing real scale tests on civil engineering cables or cylindrical technical elements (cables and moorings for bridges and offshore structures).

These tests are necessary to validate innovating technical solution and ensure its durability and integrity when submitted to real load conditions (static and dynamic loads in combined tension and flexure). It is the only such equipment in France and only two other similar testing facilities exist in the world.

Besides, the team in charge of this equipment dispose of internal skills allowing to extend the capabilities of the equipment depending on the studied object (CAO conception, hydraulic and mechanical skills, …) and of important monitoring capacities (displacements, forces, strains, acoustic survey).

• Dimensions: samples/cables up to 16 m long
• Frame: in reinforced concrete with a resistance of 30 000 kN with multiply anchorage possibilities
• Static loading: three hydraulic jacks with mechanical stands allowing to apply up to 24 000 kN
• Dynamic loading: possibility to combine dynamic axial solicitations with vertical ones (around several MN)
• Acoustic and displacement monitoring during the tests

• Tension-flexure characterization in fatigue of mooring and umbilical cables for floating offshore structures
• Optimization of the cables and moorings
• Monitoring solution appraisal for the SHM of offshore cables