Even relief of stress in a rope may have disastrous consequences: Two examples

Technical Meeting Experiences with Ropes – Lenzburg 2003

Case 1
ln a study of the recovery length, all wires of sections in a stranded rope were broken on purpose (Figure 1). The sections were examined in static tensile tests. During one of these the rope was to be visually examined before it broke. The tensile force was not increased further, on the contrary it was decreased for "reasons of safety". Shortly after this decrease in load was started, the rope disintegrated explosively.

Author: G. Oplatka