Working group 1 - Experimental endurance studies

The readers of the OIPEEC Bulletin know that experimental endurance studies are going on but not within the control or direction or even suggestion from OIPEEC so that this Working Group has nothing or very little to report. ln the first years of OIPEEC broad basic research programs like COMMA 1, COMMA  2 and Block Load Program were designed and organized by OIPEEC with a wide international participation. ln short COMMA 1 was aimed at discovering the differences in fatigue life of a given wire rope tested on the many testing machines working at that time, COMMA 2 was the attempt to reduce such differences establishing more stringent test parameters. The results of these Programmes prompted OIPEEC to propose the concept of a reference machine (REFMA), to specify its working parameters, to select its layout and its design and, to some extent, to pay for the detailed drawings. After that, with a large effort, in Delft and in Torino two prototypes were built and put to work. The Block Load Program successfully verified the applicability of the principles of cumulative damage to wire ropes fatigue.

 Author(s): Ciuffi, R.