L. Mahadevan et Jb. Keller, COILING OF FLEXIBLE ROPES, Proceedings - Royal Society. Mathematical, physical and engineering sciences, 452(1950), 1996, pp. 1679-1694
A thin flexible inextensible rope fed continuously from a fixed height
and falling on a horizontal plane usually forms a circular coil. This
phenomenon is analysed as a geometrically nonlinear free-boundary pro
blem for a linearly elastic rope. The stiffness and velocity of the ro
pe, the height from which it is fed and gravity are taken into account
. The problem is solved by using a numerical continuation scheme. The
coil radius is determined as a function of the various parameters. Tab
les and graphs of the results are presented.