Experimental Investigation of Friction and Slip at the Traction Interface of Rope and Sheave

In this paper, an exclusive testing rig was built to experimentally investigate the friction and slip at elevator traction interface under different traction conditions. The experimental results indicated that slipping occurs at both ends of contact arc first and then expands to the middle region gradually until the full slip along the sheave occurs. In addition, the full slip occurs earlier under lower rope pretension. Meanwhile, by setting similar boundary and loading conditions as in the experiments, the finite element analysis was performed. The simulation results agree with the experiments very well but reveal more details about traction behavior.