Investigation into the effects of steel wire rope specimen length on breaking force

Abstract

This report covers work conducted to evaluate the effects of specimen length on the breaking force, in an attempt to validate or refine the discard criteria of SABS 0293: 1996. Inter alia, this included an examination of the postulation of van Zyl (2000). The methodology employed was to test different length of triangular strand and non-spin rope to destruction, and to evaluate these results against SABS 0293:1996. For each rope construction, specimens were prepared both with and without cut wires, giving a total of some 26 triangular strand and five non-spin samples. Unfortunately, anomalous behaviour of the non-spin rope led to the discontinuation of these tests in favour of a greater number of triangular strand rope specimens