Use of high-modulus fibre ropes in rope drives

To achieve superior performances in rope drives used in e.g. crawler cranes or in rack feeders, the manufacturers today have the aim to use high-modulus fibre ropes. These kind of fibre ropes made using materials such as Vectran have the great advantage of high breaking strengths and greallifetimes when bended OVef sheaves in comparison to wire ropes. Fibre ropes can achieve those great lifetimes even with reduced Old-ratios over the rope sheaves in comparison to wire ropes which gives the manufacturers the opportunity to build their systems smaller and more efficient. AI 1FT two projects were performed to research the possibilities to indude highmodulus fibre ropes in rope drives such as for Storage/Retrieval (SIR) machines. Amongst others, investigations were done in which way rope drives have to be modified to meet the requirements of fibre ropes. Because of their different behaviour, compared to wire ropes, rope drives for fibre ropes have to meet other requirements than rope drives for wire ropes.