How many years is the safety rope scrapped?

Article 5.2.2 of ASTM standard F1740-96(2007) suggests that the longest service life of the rope is 10 years. The ASTM Committee recommends that the safety protection rope should be replaced even if it has not been used after ten years of storage.

When we take the safety rope out for practical operation and use it in dirty, sunny and rainy conditions, so that it can run quickly on pulleys, rope grabbers and slow descenders, what will be the consequences of this use? Rope is a textile. Bending, knotting, use on rough surface and loading/unloading cycle will all cause fiber wear, thus reducing the use strength of rope. However, it is not clear why the micro-damage of ropes will accumulate into macro-damage, and the reason why the use strength of ropes is obviously reduced.

Bruce Smith, co-author of On Rope, collected and broke more than 100 sample ropes for cave exploration. According to the usage of ropes, samples are classified as “newer”, “normal use” or “abused”. “Newer” ropes lose 1.5% to 2% strength every year on average, while “normal use” ropes lose 3% to 4% strength every year. Smith concluded that “the good maintenance of ropes is far more important than the service life of ropes.” How many years is the safety rope scrapped?

Smith’s experiment proves that when used lightly, the rescue rope loses 1.5% to 2% strength every year on average. When used frequently, it loses 3% to 5% strength every year on average. This information can help you estimate the strength loss of the rope you use, but it can’t tell you exactly whether you should eliminate the rope. Although you can estimate the strength loss of the rope, you must also know what the allowable strength loss is before the rope is eliminated. As of today, no standard can tell us how strong a used safety rope should be.

In addition to the loss of shelf life and strength, another reason for eliminating ropes is that the ropes are damaged or the ropes have suffered suspicious damage. Timely inspection can find traces of damage, and the team members may report in time that the rope has been hit by impact load, hit by rocks or ground between the stretcher and the wall. If you decide to eliminate a rope, take it apart and check the inside of the damaged position, so as to know more about the extent to which the rope skin is damaged and can still protect the rope core. In most cases, the rope core will not be damaged.

Again, if you have doubts about the integrity of a safety rope, eliminate it. The cost of equipment replacement is not expensive enough to risk the lives of rescuers.