Automatic detection of defects in pre-stressed multi strand wires using hall effect sensor

Abstract

Pre-stressed wire ropes are the steel-reinforced cables used in bridges to carry loads and to prevent the bridges from displacements. Steel strands are of different orientations and with arbitrary number of wires within it. This strands twisted one over the other to form the steel ropes, which plays a major role for supportive purpose and any defects in the strand wires leads to failure of the rope and the structures which it supports. So it became essential to inspect periodically, to ensure the safety operation. But, the challenges are that the ropes are at the non-accessible and non-demandable locations, thereby the common inspection methods are limited. So in this research, inspection of wire ropes had done by using a robot with Hall Effect sensor. This developed robot has to be allowed to pass over the cable and the detector detects the defects, if any based on the flux variations at the broken steel strands. The experimentation results proved that the developed robot is at par in detection and it can be used to detect the defects for various applications.