Evaluation of Fretting‐Induced Degradation in Steel Wire Rope Strand Using Continuum Damage Mechanics

ABSTRACT Fretting phenomenon contributes significantly to the failure of steel wire ropes. The fretting occurs in two modes: partial slipping and gross sliding at the trellis point of contact where the material experiences high contact pressure and relative slipping of wires. A new damage model has been developed incorporating the fatigue‐induced residual modulus of elasticity as the fretting parameter. This newly developed model has been applied to the simplified two‐wire model previously. This paper presents the application of the novel damage model on the steel wire rope strand. The damage model is coded in the UMAT subroutine, and FEA has been carried out in Abaqus Software. The wire rope strand experiences the gross sliding condition using a coefficient of friction = 0.2 and 0.8. The damage response and residual modulus on the trellis point of contact have been extensively evaluated and found to follow Ruiz's fretting parameter, thus conforming the fretting condition with gross sliding.