Bend Restrictors & Bend Stiffeners

When making a steel termination to a cable and operating it offshore on a vessel, the way to get the assembly overboard is by using a Cable Overboard Unit (COU) or a cable sheave. This can to some extend introduce a sharp bend of the cable in the joint between the cable and the steel part.

The sharp bending of the cable can be minimised by using a bend stiffener or a bend restrictor/Armadillo. The bend restrictor will only allow the cable to bend to a certain angle where it will be stopped mechanically.

The bend stiffener will make it more difficult to bend the cable as you have the outer reinforcement either in Neoprene or PUR mounted onto your cable, which will allow more force to be used on the cable before it will bend. The advantage of using either of the two solutions is a longer cable lifetime.