A new and innovative wire rope bending fatigue machine

In conventional bending fatigue machines, a relatively short section of the test rope travels over one test sheave only. Many effects found in typical rope applications cannot be reproduced by these fatigue machines. This paper describes a new concept for a bending fatigue test machine which can produce conditions typically found on a crane. The machine subjects different sections of the test rope to different numbers of bending cycles. Measurements during the test and an analysis of the different rope sections after the test lead to a wealth of information about the rope and its degradation mechanism. Some preliminary results from work undertaken for NASA are presented in the paper.

Author(s): R. Verreet and J.M. Teissier