Fire behavior of steel wire ropes: Experimental investigation and numerical analysis

This paper describes the mechanical behavior of wire ropes under fire conditions with the aim of developing a method for determining the fire resistance of steel wire ropes for civil and ropeway applications. The behavior of ropes subjected to severe thermal transients representative of fire scenarios has been investigated through numerical and experimental analyses. Since no standards are available for studying the fire behavior of these structural elements, the ISO 834 standard curve was considered as fire model owing to its severity. For this purpose, parametric finite element models, capable of simulating the thermo-mechanical response of both full locked and Warrington Seale ropes have been developed. The obtained information in terms of load redistribution during the test as well as evolution of damage and failure mechanisms was used to set up the experimental investigation. The good agreement between experimental and numerical results indicates the proposed approach as an effective methodology for the analysis of the fire behavior of wire ropes, once the material properties and loading conditions have been established.