NUMBER OF STRANDS AND CONSTRUCTION DETERMINE WIRE ROPE CLASSIFICATION

Wires are the basic building blocks of a wire rope. They lay around a “center” in a specified pattern in one or more layers to form a strand. The strands are helically laid together around a center, typically some type of core, to form a wire rope.

The strands provide all the tensile strength of a fiber core rope and over 90% of the strength of a typical 6-strand wire rope with an independent wire rope core.

Properties like fatigue resistance and resistance to abrasion are directly affected by the design of strands.

In most strands with two or more layers of wires, inner layers support outer layers in such a manner that all wires may slide and adjust freely when the rope bends.

As a general rule, a rope that has strands made up of a few large wires will be more abrasion resistant and less fatigue resistant than a rope of the same size made up of strands with many smaller wires.