Safety improvements in mountaineering gear have enabled the increasing popularity of rock climbing as a sport. Both amateurs and experts want to know the condition of their equipment with a high degree of reliability. For climbing ropes, diagnostics are only carried out qualitatively by visual inspection. The assessment is left to the personal judgment of the user, thus leaving considerable margins of uncertainty on the rope’s condition. To address this shortcoming, this article explores the possibility of estimating fatigue damage from the impact force on the rope. This value is estimated from the measurements of the climber’s acceleration using a wearable device. Then, force data are correlated to the fatigue characteristic of the rope. In this study, three ropes were used by professional climbers through different routes. After this field conditioning, the ropes were tested following the UIAA standard and compared to a control rope. The results show that the proposed method can estimate the rope cumulative damage, but it relies on the accuracy of the damage model. In particular, the parameter describing the contact between the rope and the runner is important for a correct estimate.

中文翻译：

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攀登绳索疲劳监测

登山装备的安全改进使攀岩运动越来越受欢迎。业余爱好者和专家都希望高度可靠地了解他们设备的状况。对于攀爬绳索，只能通过目视检查进行定性诊断。评估留给用户的个人判断，因此对绳索的状况留下相当大的不确定性余量。为了解决这个缺点，本文探讨了估计绳索上的冲击力造成的疲劳损伤的可能性。该值是通过使用可穿戴设备测量登山者的加速度来估计的。然后，力数据与绳索的疲劳特性相关联。在这项研究中，专业登山者通过不同的路线使用了三根绳索。在这种现场调节之后，按照 UIAA 标准对绳索进行测试，并与对照绳索进行比较。结果表明，该方法可以估计绳索累积损伤，但依赖于损伤模型的准确性。特别是，描述绳索和滑轮之间接触的参数对于正确估计很重要。