Rope and chains CO Script

Question 1:

Throughout history, miners have hold heavier and heavier loads up from below ground but this puts
dangerous stresses on the traditional pulley and ropes used.

Man has made rope since the earliest times and depending on where you lived you could choose
from a range of different plants to make it. In Asia, a relative of the banana plant was used to make
manila and then across much of Europe cannabis of which this is a relative was used to make hemp
amongst other things.

Rope is usually made by twisting fibers together. But it does have its limitations.

To understand rope’s limitations, I’ve decided to break some and material expert Clive Civio is going
to help us.

They test a 10 mm (about the thickness of a little finger) hemp rope using a hydraulic press and a
load cell. First the rope stretches, and when they hit 300kg, the rope starts breaking.

The rope does not break suddenly but gradually, as different strands of the rope start to break
individually, until eventually the final strand will break.

Conclusion of the experiment: the way it breaks is useful, the weight at which it breaks (640kg =
nearly 2/3rd of a ton) is not so good.

Question 2:

Metal chain is an alternative to rope. Trouble is it has a nasty way of breaking.

They are now testing a metal chain, 10mm in diameter (same diameter as the rope which they
snapped earlier). To do so, they use a skip which they fill with water and they film it with a slow
motion camera.

VOC FAIT JUSQUE LA!!

They are running out of water when the chain finally breaks at 3790kg. It takes a much greater load
than rope but breaks catastrophically and without any warning: the chain broke in 5 less than
milliseconds.

The chain breaks exactly where two links cross over. They’ve found the link which failed. It’s inherent
to the design of the chain that the material is going to see a shear stress.

Conclusion of the experiment: Every chain is going to have that weakness at that point. + every chain
will break without prior warning.

Question 3:

In 1829, Wilhelm Albert director of a silver mine having witnessed chain links snap without warning
was inspired to reconsider the merits of rope.
So what was needed to hold huge load of silver from deep in the mine was something that combined
the structure of rope with the strength of metal. Her W A discovered just that.

He twisted metal strands together to form a metal rope, the world’s first cable.

To prove W A was on to something we tested cable. No surprise we quickly got the skip to overflow.
The cable, although the same diameter as the chain is easily carrying over 800kg more and well over
4000 kg more than the rope. It’s the best of both worlds. Twisting metal strands together like rope
means cable is exceptionally strong and when it fails it should give ample warning, just like rope.

Question 4.

Back at Millau the engineers were utterly confident in the strength of their metal ropes. At one point
during construction almost 170 metres of deck hung over the valley from just 6 cables.

The completed bridge is designed to carry 35000 tonnes that’s the equivalent of pick up trucks
crammed nose to tail in all lanes, piled 10 high.

To prove the cables strength, engineers organized a showy demonstration, 28 trucks with a
combined weight of over 900 tonnes drove to the mid point. The cables barely gave. The span bent a
mere 26 cm.

A triumph then, for Wi. A metal rope idea.

But there’s a neat twist here at Millau. This bridge is designed to last 120 years. But inevitably an
essentially old cable is not as strong as a new one. But if the bridge is held up by cables, how do you
take them down to replace them without the bridge falling down?

Well the answer to that lies in the construction of the cables themselves. Because from above, they
look like a single solid piece. But in fact each one is made up of a bundle of as many as 91 smaller
cables.

Those smaller cables in fact are each made up of 7 individual strands and their job is crucial. Each of
those can be taken down and replaced if they corrode without having to take down the entire
bundle.