A Novel Prediction Perspective to the Bending Over Sheave Fatigue Lifetime of Steel Wire Ropes by Means of Artificial Neural Networks

Steel wire ropes are frequently subjected to dynamic reciprocal bending movement over sheaves or drums in cranes, elevators, mine hoists, and aerial ropeways. This kind of movement initiates fatigue damage on the ropes. It is a quite significant case to know bending cycles to failure of rope in service, which is also known as bending over sheave fatigue lifetime. It helps to take precautions in the plant in advance and eliminate catastrophic accidents due to the usage of rope when allowable bending cycles are exceeded. To determine the bending fatigue lifetime of ropes, experimental studies are conducted. However, bending over sheave fatigue testing in laboratory environments require high initial preparation cost and a long time to finalize the experiments. Due to those reasons, this chapter focuses on a novel prediction perspective to the bending over sheave fatigue lifetime of steel wire ropes by means of artificial neural networks.