Research progress and applications of high-performance fiber ropes in infrastructure: A systematic review

Abstract

With the growing demand for lightweight and high-strength designs in marine engineering and civil infrastructure, high-performance synthetic fiber ropes have emerged as promising alternatives to conventional load-bearing components. Owing to their low density, high specific strength, and excellent flexibility, these ropes offer significant potential in next-generation structural systems. However, most existing studies focus on either single-fiber behavior or specific rope configurations, lacking a systematic, cross-material, and cross-structure synthesis. This review aims to provide a comprehensive overview of recent advances in high-performance fiber ropes, encompassing their material characteristics, structural design, mechanical behavior, and civil engineering applications. It highlights the typical configurations, mechanical responses, and functional scenarios of commonly used ropes, while comparing the intrinsic properties of various high-performance fibers and their performance under tensile, creep, and fatigue tests. Furthermore, the paper summarizes the characteristics and applicability of “yarn-level” and “fiber-level” modeling approaches in numerical simulations and discusses the practical uses of fiber ropes in infrastructure systems. Finally, the main challenges and potential research directions are discussed to provide insights for future studies in this evolving field.