Rope failures on tower cranes

Technical Meeting Experiences with Ropes – Lenzburg 2003

This paper discusses two actual cases of wire rope failures which occurred in Toronto, Canada. Luckily, no one was injured. Subsequent investigations by the Canadian Safety Authorities and inquests by the Ministry of Labour raised much concern over the use of improper rope types an tower cranes. The political problem is that tower cranes tend to operate on public land and in many cases over public accessible streets and pathways. Although loads are not lifted over 'traffic' or 'people', a sudden rope failure can have a much wider damaging effect as the 'concrete bucket' tend to drops.

Author: K. Buschmann