L-36.com
Home Articles Soft Shackles
Weather Tide Sailing Companion Tide/Current (Day) Tide/Current (Week) SF Bay Current Map
Manuals Used Sails
Technical Data Marine Resources Racing Resources @L-36 Top Videos L-36 Owners Roster Contact

Rope Reference Articles

Below are listed a variety of technical articles on ropes and knots. They cover both climbing and yachting but are of interest to both sports. Some are achedemic journal articles and several are presentations of test results. That said, several of the academic articles look like student papers and some are dreadful in some of their methods although the worst have been removed.

I have added a short review of each article below.

  1. Knot Strength: The Study of Knot Performance This article talks about the strength of various common knots but then goes into the details of what characteristics make a knot strong. I ran into some of these issues when developing the double soft shackle and the things I did to make that shackle stronger are similar to the points raised in this article.
  2. Douglas Young: An Assessment Of The Strength Of Seizings And Whippings Used To Create Eye Terminations On Sailing Rope.Student paper that tests eyes made by seizings. The conclusion is that they have similar strength to knots. Not a great paper but I left it in because it addresses a subject I have not seen delt with other places.
  3. Design And Performance Of Ropes For Climbing And Sailing. Journal Of Materials: Design And Applications, This paper, written by a University Professor is semi interesting to sailors starting on page 8.
  4. An Assessment Of The Strength Of Knots And Splices Used As Eye Terminations In A Sailing Environment, Sports Engineering (2006) This excellent article covers the testing of various knots and splices. The most interesting thing to me is the strength of the splices and the validation of the used rope splice.
  5. Matthew Smith: An Assessment Of The Effects Of Environmental Conditions On The Performance Of Dynamic Climbing Ropes Wet rope isn't as strong as dry rope.
  6. Industrial rope access- Investigation into items of personal protective equipment A nice discussion on knots and their strength starts on page 11.
  7. European Death Knot Testing Testing of the overhand knot used to tie two ropes together was done. There are also good links in the reference section.

NOTICE: Some pages have affiliate links to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Please read website Cookie, Privacy, and Disclamers by clicking HERE. To contact me click HERE. For my YouTube page click HERE