Date of Award

5-9-2023

Degree Type

Capstone Project

First Advisor

Bahram Nassersharif

Abstract

A marine winch system is designed to raise and lower objects from a boat into the ocean. In this system, a cable is fed through a bellmouth from the ship lowering down to the water with a load of up to 50,000 Newtons. With a load this high, frictional wear is inevitable. Ensuring that most of this frictional wear affects the fairlead system, and protects the multimillion-dollar cable is essential.

The project's objective is to improve the current fairlead system that Raytheon uses on the stern of their research vessel. The focus of this improvement will be reducing the amount of friction between the cable and fairlead system. Certain ideas such as using a form of lubrication on the bellmouth or changing the angle at which the cable is fed through the bellmouth are both possible improvements to be made. However, after various methods of reasoning and testing, it was decided that implementing a four-roller system instead of the bellmouth would be the most effective way to reduce friction on the cable.

In the design process, the four-roller system is directly compared to the bellmouth to compare the amount of friction on both. The angle of the cable going over the rollers, the thickness of the cable, and the angle of the rollers are all taken into consideration in the design process. The four-roller system was proven to be successful as there is no way for the cable to escape and travel outside the closed system. The design also allows for no snagging in any corners and the side rollers keep the cable in line with the boat. There is a great reduction in the amount of friction occurring as this is proven with a heat generation test.

Comments

Team Name: Team 7: Marine Winch Systems

Company Sponsor: Raytheon Missiles & Defense

Sponsor Representative: Maria Berube, Steven Berube, Anthony Rafanelli

Document Reference: URI-MCE-402-007-2023

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