Research on the fatigue and fracture behavior due to the fretting wear of steel wire in hoisting rope

Hoisting steel rope is an important component of the winding equipment in coalmines. Fretting wear and its induced fatigue and fracture of wires have been the major failure modes of the hoisting ropes. In this paper, a series of experiments on the fretting friction and wear of steel wires were performed on an elastic beam oscillation test rig. The worn wires after fretting tests were put into fatigue test on the servo-fatigue test machine. The research results demonstrated that the fretting wear depth of the steel wires increased with the increasing fretting cycles and contact loads. The fatigue life of the steel wires with fretted damage was inverse proportional to the wear depth, and then to the fretting cycles and contact loads. The fretting wear and fatigue mechanisms were analyzed through SEM morphologies of fretting wear scars and fracture sections. It was found that the wear mechanism of fretting wire depended on the contact loads. For low contact loads, light scratch modes dominated the fretting of wires. When contact loads increased, third body abrasion appeared on the worn surfaces.