Friction of Wire Rope in Cable Puller.

Abstract

It is very important for a cable puller to grasp a wire rope tightly without any slippage and with no damage on both of the rope surface and cable gripper. The friction mechanism of a wire rope under a large deformation due to high grasp force, however, has not been sufficiently clarified. The present paper will report some results on friction of the wire rope under high compressive load on some cases such as under lubricated condition and under different contact conditions using three types of wire rope with steel core, fiber core and a galvanized rope with fiber core. As the results, the difference of contact area between the wire rope and gripper greatly affects the friction behavior; that is, the gripper with a curved surface can bring large friction force comparing with the gripper with a flat surface owing to its large real contact area, which is dominated by a restriction of the escape of wire between gripper surfaces and the deformation of a rope and a core.