Analytical approach of availability and maintainability for structural lifting cables using reliability-based optimization

In industrial settings, the risks due to wire ropes failure are important and have much challenge for engineering and design, especially if costs are assessed in terms of human lives. Frequently the extent of damage and the carrying capacity of ropes are closely related to the sense of safety by staff and equipments, therefore the failure prediction has become so essential for optimal use of all industrial facilities. The aim of this article is to introduce a practical method for reliability modeling wire ropes subjected simultaneously to tensile loads in order to ensure the exploitation of wire ropes under optimal conditions. In order to optimize the relation reliability-maintainability and availability of metallic wire ropes, an extensive analytical modeling study has been performed in order to estimate the reliability-related to damage in the case of mixed systems, series-parallel or parallel-series configuration with symmetrical applied. The adopted approach is an approach multi-scale with a total decoupling between the scale of the wire and that of the cable. Keywords - Wire ropes, damage, reliability-maintainability, availability, mixed systems.