Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.5552/crojfe.2025.3027
Suitability of Steel Wire Rope End Connectors for Ground-Based Logging Applications
Christoph Huber
orcid.org/0009-0008-3321-7755
; Austrian Research Center for Forests Department of Forest Engineering Forstpark 1 4801, Traunkirchen AUSTRIA
*
Jürgen Richter
; Austrian Research Center for Forests Department of Forest Engineering Forstpark 1 4801, Traunkirchen AUSTRIA
Christoph Haas
; Austrian Research Center for Forests Department of Forest Engineering Forstpark 1 4801, Traunkirchen AUSTRIA
* Corresponding author.
Abstract
Rope end connectors are a cricital component for attaching logs and trees to winches in ground-based harvesting operations. Knowing their strength not only in theory, but also under real working conditions, is crucial for selecting and dimensioning suitable end connectors in order to ensure compliance with the respective safety factors. Currently, there are limited published testing data on the strength and failure types of various end connectors. Furthermore, no information is available how end connectors perform if they are used in combination with rope sliders. Thus, different end connectors suitable for 12 mm steel wire ropes were developed and break-tested under conditions close to reality to determine their suitability for logging operations, considering different load type combinations by including rope sliders. The aim of the study was to give an overview of the suitablity of end connectors and different rope slider – end connector combinations for ground-based harvesting operations and to become aware of where and at which forces failures occure first. The results show that if the load is only attached directly to the end connector, turn-back eyes and wedge sockets provided consistent performance in breaking strengths. Attaching loads only to rope sliders led to siginifcant reductions of the end connectors performance in general. A comparatively high loss of performance was assessed if turn-back eyes were used in combination with rope sliders. This raises the question of their suitability as an appropriate end connector in ground-based logging. The most common cause of failure was found to be rope breakage, which mainly occurs due to the strong deflection angles of the rope during pulling.
Keywords
winch, end termination, end connection, rope failure, timber harvesting
Hrčak ID:
333413
URI
Publication date:
18.7.2025.
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