Aiming at the radial buckling failure of the umbilical armored steel wire in marine engineering, a 3D simplified finite element model is established to simulate the radial buckling of the helically wound structure. Taken a typical umbilical in a sea area of China as an example, the radial buckling failure critical load of the single armored steel wire with single pitch is obtained. The influence of different sensitive parameters on the critical buckling load of the single armored steel wire is studied. It is found that the relationships of helically angle of the armored steel wire, section moment of inertia, helically winding radius with the critical load are roughly parabolic, linear and negative exponential, respectively. This conclusion will provide reference for the buckling resistance design of the umbilical armored steel wire. It is found that the critical buckling load of the helically armored steel wires with the corresponding number can be approximately obtained by the accumulation of the critical load of a single armored steel wire, which can be used as a conservative estimate for solving the radial critical buckling load of real umbilical with single armored steel wire.