Full contact analysis of wire rope strand subjected to varying loads based on semi-analytical method

Abstract A wire rope is often subjected to a varying axial tensile force or torsional moment, resulting in its unstable performances. However, this problem has not been studied to date due to the lack of a scheme effectively determining the interwire contact status. For this, an interwire full contact model considering different contact statuses is established based on contact mechanics and thin rods theory. Then the model is solved with the semi-analytical method (SAM), into which the conjugate gradient method (CGM) and fast Fourier transform (FFT) are employed for analyzing the contact behavior. With the above contact dealing, the full contact performances are achieved for the core-wire contact, the wire-wire contact and the coupled contact statuses of the strand subjected to varying axial loads. And it is found that the interwire contact status of the strand may change with the varying loads, resulting in the unstable distributions of the interwire contact pressure and deformation. Meanwhile, the validity of the proposed full contact model is verified.