Stefan Kaczmarczyk has a master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and he obtained his doctorate in Engineering Dynamics. He is Professor of Applied Mechanics and Postgraduate Programme Leader for Lift Engineering at the University of Northampton. His expertise is in the area of applied dynamics and vibration with particular applications to vertical transportation and material handling systems.
He has been involved in collaborative research with a number of national and international partners and has an extensive track record in consulting and research in vertical transportation and lift engineering. Professor Kaczmarczyk has published over 90 journal and international conference papers in this field. He is a Chartered Engineer, being a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, and he has been serving on the Applied Mechanics Group Committee of the Institute of Physics.
Steel wire ropes (SWRs) employed as suspension means in lifts systems are subjected to bending when passing around rigid traction sheaves / diverter pulleys. A suspension rope can be represented as a moving Euler-Bernoulli beam and its mechanical interactions at the contact area are then described by a nonlinear Boundary Value Problem (BVP) model with unknown boundaries.
The BVP can be solved numerically and the solution yields the span shape, curvature values, slope angles and the distribution of tension along the rope span. Due to the bending stiffness the wrap angles are decreased and the distribution of tension becomes nonuniform. It is shown that this results in the tension being increased which affects the traction conditions and useful life of the ropes.
On the mechanical interactions in suspension rope – sheave / pulley systems.
Professor Stefan Kaczmarczyk.
University of Northampton, UK.