Abstract
It is important to know the tension of wire rope in use to avoid accident. But most of wire ropes are being used without knowing their tension. So far many ideas have been proposed to evaluate wire rope tension in use. However, few ideas have been realized to the present. We developed a simple wire rope tension meter that could be attached to a wire rope easily in use. The device applies twisting torque to a part of the wire rope by a stepping motor. A linear relation between wire rope tension and the torque obtained by the device was confirmed by the experiments. In addition, the change of wire rope tension and twisting torque with time were evaluated. They decreased gradually with time. Therefore a decrement of wire rope tension is able to be estimated by twisting torque. A simple model was proposed to account for a linear relation between the wire rope tension and twisting torque and hysteresis ioop associated with twist loading on a rope. From these experimental studies, the device seems to be effective for evaluation of wire rope tension.
