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TESTING

The primary function of the device is to reduce the amount of sheath damage in comparison to a traditional ascender design utilizing teeth.  So for the test, the designed ascender as well as a benchmark will be tested in order to compare their abrasive damage to the rope over a standard loading cycle for ascension. This test will require two ascenders, a rope, somewhere to hang the rope that will hold 500 lbs. and a high definition camera. The parameter of interest will be the amount of fiber damage seen on the rope sheath. The predicted performance for this test is that the designed device will cause less damage to the sheath of the rope. Data acquisition will be by camera in order to take clear pictures and then evaluated by sight. The testing took place over the third and fourth weeks of the quarter (see gantt chart). The secondary testing includes measuring the amount of force required to pull the device up the rope under a typical climbing scenario.

The test will involve weighting both devices on a small section of rope multiple times with the weight of an average climber and then inspecting the rope for abrasion damage. The limits of this testing will be the weight applied; the abrasive damage caused by the toothed design will increase dramatically under high loads which will not be tested here. The precision and accuracy of this test will depend on the number of times the rope is weight and how small of an area of rope the loads are kept to. The data for this test will be stored digitally and analyzed by attempting to count the number of broken fibers in the pictures the data will be presented in two photos highlighting any damage to the ropes sheath. The second test will involve pulling the devices up the rope with a hanging scale.

The values produced by test 1 will be a count of the number of broken fibers produced by each device with a calculated percent reduction in the number of fibers by the more successful device. Success criteria for this test would be a broken fiber count less than 25. The values produced by test 2 will be the force required to pull the device up the rope.

Testing: References
Testing: Welcome
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