Non-Invasive Force Measurement Based on Magneto-Elastic Effect for Steel Wire Ropes

Force measurement on steel wire rope (SWR) is significant to ensure the safety of people and property. Previous methods propose the electro-magnetic sensor, which measures the force applied on the SWR non-invasively and does not damage the structure of the SWR. Based on the magneto-elastic effect and integration of induction voltage as the indicator, electro-magnetic sensors perform well in many situations. However, in practice, the integration of induction voltage method is noise-sensitive, because the noise is easily accumulated by integration in the practical environment. In this case, we propose an improved method based on a novel indicator, maximal induction voltage. The maximal induction voltage method is influenced less by noise, as no integration of noise term is involved, so the maximal induction voltage method has better performance on noise reduction. Moreover, the paper builds a force measurement system by deriving the analytical linear relation between force and maximal induction voltage, and this linear relation can be estimated by prior experimental data. The experimental results show that the proposed method has higher linearity and sensitivity than the integration of induction voltage method.