three two one
go this is the video about the last
unsolved problem of climbing
ropes it's a deep dive into the science
behind robe development in and out in
and out and
testing including the microscopic world
of rope failures some new exciting
Technologies you do not
load the cut resistant fiber and me H
any any last
words
uh volunteering to do some human
testing nowadays ropes are almost
unbreakable so that's good for your fear
of falling but what we are about to
talk might not be so great yeah this is
a standard test of climbing
ropes a steel mass is dropped from
almost 5 m causing the forces more than
double of what you can achieve in real
life cuz it's unbreakable if you try to
literally break it if you pull on it
there is almost no chance that it will
snap no but first your back will
snap but when we talk about cutting I
was surprised that till this day there
there is no standard for how cut
resistant rope needs to be and it's not
that hard to cut the rope under tension
which means that there is no
standardized test which would measure
how good the Rope is against situations
like
this I mean it's not like no one worked
on it uh it's it's a really difficult
topic and a lot of institutes
manufacturers notified bodies and
Laboratories worked on that
now before we start breaking ropes a
quick detour to the 19th century the
early days of climbing with the best
advice you would get back then is that
the leader must not fall we used hemp
propes made for agricultural purposes
that had almost no stretch so if you
fall you either going to break your rope
or your ribs shall we go climbing
I brought some ropes brand new smells
organic want to take a whip on it are we
doing some uh test falls on
this not sure you want to now as you can
imagine these agricultural ropes didn't
had much quality control and that's why
in
1862 this serious looking Swiss man
decided to bring Swiss quality to
climbing ropes and here mammut was born
a year later followed by a German
company Eder and multiple Decades of
craziest
climbing
yeah now in 1935 everything started to
change when the chemical company dupond
invented nylon world's first synthetic
fiber yes boys this is it this is a
synthetic fiber you mean we make cloth
out of that yes we do actually to make
nylon you only need two components acid
and this thing that I cannot pronounce
so then I'm going to reach in here and
where the interface is I'm going to pull
out some nylon so here we go now we'll
see how much nylon we can pull out of
this
thing there's a meter or
so two so on a large scale this is done
not with a whole bunch of people doing
this of course
but by the way take a guess who was the
first user of such great
material certainly is a long time since
we've seen legs looking like that
perhaps I should say stocking was
looking like that that's right women
they love nylon stalking so much that
they gathered in crowds real Nyon and
fully fashioned very nice to see again
from any
angle and then World War II broke out
due to the conflict with Japan United
States lost access to Silk suppliers so
military needed to transition all silk
products like parachutes to nylon which
greatly accelerated development of nylon
but women felt the shortages but no
worries you can always paint legs to
look like they have stockings turned out
to be a great
business after the war nylon found its
way to Europe and mammut launched a rope
which can actually stretch but a year
later Eder invented the C mantle
technology which was an even bigger
Revolution it's a little bit funny
because a reed invented the kmle r the
owner of Mamud was not really convinced
by the New Concept he wanted to stick to
the Twisted one and just a couple years
later um M would also launch the first
ctal Rob so very quickly realized that
oh that's actually a good idea yes curl
mantle ropes are made out of two
components the core strands that are
twisted and the shift which is braided
around to protect the
core okay keep going keep going very
expensive rope with my uh with my hourly
pay okay so you have two different types
of spools here the red one run into this
direction by Red we mean this yeah the
red one go counter clockwise and the
yellow ones clockwise and they always go
in and out in and out in order to create
the
braid it's actually quite cool to see
this if you look at the core strands
from Modern climbing ropes they also
have this kind of twist this is like
exactly the same as this in theory yes
why is there many core strands and not
one big core strand Twisted together
that's a good question we have cores
that go in s direction that are twisted
in One Direction and other cores that
are twisted in the other direction this
is something that is a reoccurring theme
in the twines that are used in a rope
that you always differ the direction to
kind of work against the
natural uh motion of twisting now back
in the days when the military was
testing parachute deployment we noticed
that forces higher than 15g can result
in injuries to The Spine and Neck and
since climbers also don't like breaking
their backs they decided to borrow that
limit when the uiaa standard was
developed the developers back in the day
said it's impossible to reach the limit
of the 12 kons that is interesting that
at first we came up with the standard
that nobody could achieve and then only
later we managed to achieve it okay in
1964 we we got the first rope that is
certified to not break our backs and now
80 years later and we're still using the
same curl mantle technology which is
kind of impressive but what's not
impressive that till this day our ropes
still have the last unsolved problem
that they are not that hard to cut
especially when they are under tension
give me some sharpish objects sharp edge
object sharpish sharpish
oh
good but that's so
tiny this is dangerous this bringing a
knife and a file so we have a
file which is uh it's a metal file we
have a knife and this
thing in k no I will start with a dull
one and if it turns out to be too much
work I will go to sharper one so at
first we pull the Rope to 80 kg this
imitates a climber simply hanging on the
Rope oh wow it's not that hard to
cut
and yeah this file is not that sharp
kind of
[Music]
scary no show
not as spectacular as you'd hit what I
want to actually now
try Okay significantly
harder yeah if it's like completely
relaxed
huh train you got really red
dude I just wanted to see how much
harder it is to cut not underload so
let's try what happens at
3.5 kons it's a hard fall load let's go
do I need the safety something you think
I'm going to die at three no no five
have you tried this before
no are you brave enough is the question
now my camera man is going
away you
ready yeah I'm
not it said something it wants to
talk let adjusting to the
weight it's War wow I'm barely barely
doing anything oh now be careful with
your fingers
[Music]
I think it
will wow I barely touched it so as you
can see tension in ropes plays a big
role in Cut resistance and now some of
you might be thinking why can't we
simply add some kind of material in the
Rope which would make them much harder
to cut well we do have ropes that are
made out of the Nema and aramite okay so
this is a glacier cord and where is it
used it's for securing yourself against
faults in a crass if you would fall in
there you have covered with snow so the
snow kind of dampens the Fall mhm so
this is why you don't need the Dynamics
in this type of rope this is a shoelace
yeah 6 mm is this dyo or yeah on the
inside it's a dyema on the outside it's
a polyester AR and this Glacier people
came up with a thought that it's okay to
fall on this well cuz you don't fall
well then don't use it so we put this
cord in a drop tower with relatively
small amount of slack and we wanted to
see what happens when you apply a
dynamic load on the super strong yet
stiff
material oh my God it's always so loud
in here what was the force 7.9 so what
force do you expect out of dynamic rope
on the same fall m I would say around
3.6 3.7 3.5 so 3.6 and 3.5 want to play
some bets what's your guess 3 kilon
Neons okay he's paying for
dinner no the closest one p for the
[Laughter]
dinner
[Music]
what okay so I'm playing for the dinner
so as you can see material which is
rated for 14 kiltons for a static
scenario broke at around 8 in a dynamic
drop which is a peculiar observation on
itself but that also shows that
incorporating these super strong
materials into Dynamic climbing ropes is
not that trivial now the second problem
comes from saying that if you can't
measure it you can't improve it and
turns out that measuring cut resistancy
in climbing ropes is a very tricky top
IPC in 2002 UAA proposed a test similar
to a standard drop test but here the
Rope was falling over a sharp edge but
the problem was the values that we got
or the values that they got back then
were just inconsistent within the test
but also between different institutes
and Laboratories so 2 years later the
test was withdrawn and since then a lot
of different tests were tried out by
different organizations and mammut also
also had their own idea it's a pendulum
swing with a sharp knife is dropped onto
a pre-loaded rope so instead of the Rope
falling with the weight you had rope
static and the knife was falling exactly
the knife was falling and you measured
how high the knife came after the
cutting and then you could calculate how
much energy was necessary to cut it so
we worked three years on that but at
some point we also had to say yeah it's
giving inconsistent values opened more
questions than now the common problem
with many of those tests were that
either the forces were unrealistically
high or the Dynamics in those test
introduced too much variability meaning
when the Rope is falling on some kind of
sharp edge it will never fall in exactly
the same way so in 2018 edet proposed a
slightly different approach where they
eliminated all the Dynamics here the
rope is tensioned to desired load and
then the discs spins and cuts the Rope
and the Machine is measuring how far the
disc had to travel to cut the rope in
2015 there was an accident where two
people were lowered on a single 8.7 mm
rope the Rope moved a bit over a sharp
edge and it was cut and since this test
reproduces the accident scenario really
well edet managed to answer a very
important question what had a bigger imp
impact in the accident the fact that
they used super thin 8.7 mm rope or that
they were lowered two people at the same
time first we loaded two different ropes
to 160 kg imitating two climbers hanging
and even though ropes had different
diameters the cut resistance was very
similar but then they took the same rope
but loaded it with different load and
this time the difference was much bigger
this shows that the load on the Rope has
a much bigger impact than the diameter
of the Rope so a great takeaway would be
to avoid practices where two people are
hanging on one strand of the Rope but at
the same time 160 kilos that we used is
not that much when we start talking
about Dynamic scenarios their forces can
reach up to 4
kons and also the cutting patterns
become way more more complicated
recently there was a very interesting
paper published which took ropes that
were cut and looked through the
microscope and what they found was four
dominating patterns the first one was a
clean cut the second one was a tiered
cut as if you would be cutting with a
dual knife then they found some
mushrooms these happened from high-speed
fiber overload and lastly molten fibers
and then we looked what p patterns they
will find in ropes cut by different
tests starting with ederly disc which
produced a lot of Clean Cuts but also a
lot of tiered Cuts this probably
happened because the disc actually has
these small teeth next they looked into
the old mammut test and this one was
pretty much dominated by mushrooms and
the possible explanation is because the
Rope was tensioned to unrealistically
high Force
and of course I had a question why
didn't we use more realistic loads on
this test when we lowered the preloading
to 3 4 Kon then uh some of these ropes
have not been able to be cut we were not
able to compare the results you wanted
that all the ropes will be cut but then
you can measure how much it takes that
was the difficulty of the test yeah okay
next we looked into the old uiaa test
and here we found a lot of mushrooms but
also a lot of molten fiber
and finally they simulated a realistic
Dynamic scenario where the Rope was
running across a sharp granite edge and
also they compar the patterns in
different parts of the Rope like The
Shift versus the core and after all the
analysis the study concluded that no
test method can fully replicate the
complex breaking mechanism observed
during an accident
simulation so yeah a deep rap hole but
this brings us to the best part of this
video ah fancy this thing can go up and
down yeah you don't like walking ladders
so you made the machine which goes up
and down Dano was climbing this Ladder
Up and Down millions of times it kind of
feels that it grabs the edge but it's
not like super cut yeah I mean I
wouldn't even think outside that this is
an issue there sever edges out in the
mountains that are much sharper than
this yeah so if we do the tests then you
will be afraid of climbing after
it here you have this 45° surface so
it's like 90° and then 45° cut yes cut
yeah yeah so it's not actually like a
pointy Edge it's relatively rounded Edge
but the granite has this roughness to it
yes I would say so let me get the reason
we cannot make this standardized is
because it's impossible to make this
granite edge standard like yeah so this
test setup is not something that aims to
be a standardized test method that needs
to be reproducible in different places
so you need that exact same granite edge
at in 10 different places this was not
the goal it was for us in the
development to learn how different
constructions are behaving thicker
diameters thinner diameters different
shth con instructions just to get an
insight for that okay ready 3 2 one and
go 1
go well I wouldn't want to be a climber
in this case Qui cut quiet cut that's a
quiet cut um 3 2 1 go
W and this one's friend holding
on yeah but it's just being pulled out
it's not holding anymore huh so you can
see where the cor strs were
cut we have one left it was completely
pulled out this is the original end and
you can see the whole that remains and
how hard is the fall what's the force to
the climber I would say it's a realistic
fall with realistic forces 3 kiltons or
300
kog all right our first rope was failing
very easily so we change to a thicker
one all right 3 2 1 go
[Music]
it's crazy cuz it looks like a tiny fall
and a tiny swing and it went yesterday
we basically spent the day breaking
ropes and yeah I I wouldn't have go
straight to the to the to the to the
Rock to climb because no wasn't the goal
to be the
opposite well it as a climber it kind of
scares you to see this a little yeah
that's that's true all right moving to
even thicker 9.9 mm rope 1
go wow that's quick you can see the
different types of cutting mechanisms
here first the chef has been cut and
then it kind of looks like the Rope is
remaining on one position but the load
is pulling more and more yeah you see
the cover the the course breaking one
after each other yeah so it's 3 seconds
for the whole rope to break it's quick
that's very quick mhm oh exciting so um
shall we
do okay let's do the thickest rope on
our list 3 2 one
go so I don't know who still buys such
monster
[Music]
ropes but I guess here you go that's for
your fear of fall fall ing the slow
motion
torture so yeah
subscribe and I promise that the Rope is
not going to
break come on the button is down
there we need
you thank you for subscribing you're the
best so as you can see while adding more
material and making the ropes thicker
does help a little bit it's not by much
and obviously mammut wouldn't be
inviting me just to show how all the
ropes are failing they actually been
working on something new ah so this is
the new row yes so it has an extra
something inside oh look at that I would
not even be able to guess that it's made
out of different material it feels also
kind of fabric soft I was thinking you I
will open this and we'll find some metal
inside no it's textile and the key
component is the intermediate Chief here
you have here a intermediate chief that
protects the core so normally ropes have
shift and then they have the core and
and this rope has one more sheath you
can say this intermediate sheath is made
of um high strength aramite fibers that
have an overlength so with this
overlength um they are free from tension
this is actually very interesting while
aramite is a super strong material
commonly used in safety equipment like
cut resistant gloves or bulletproof
vests however as we've seen before arite
is very
stiff so to solve this they needed to
create a design where nylon in the Rope
would stretch and absorb the impact but
aramide would stay without load this is
the so-called we call it the hybrid
Yan what is uh made of two different
fibers so this middle layer is not only
arite it's a hybrid yes okay and you see
that there is one with a longer yarn
inside yeah and one is sh okay so there
is two Thin strings one is completely
stretched now and the other one is
curled around the stretched one yes this
is the one with the over length if you
load it
now you do not
load the cut resistant fiber okay to
illustrate this is an elongation curve
of a pure nylon and this is a hybrid
yarn without an overlength so not good
good but by introducing an overlength in
aramite they managed to achieve a curve
like this so basically during the fall
you probably are not even going to feel
any difference on this rope no nice and
why is it hybrid inside why is it not
all armed it will not um be held in
position so you need anara because it
you have the overlength anywhere and if
you move with the Rope
the maybe it changes the place that's a
very smart design now it makes more
sense how does it come back after load
cuz otherwise you would stretch and then
the middle layer would move somewhere
but since you have some nylon in it it
will reset the middle layer probably as
well yes of course mhm now as a fun fact
this robe has only 4% of its weight in
aramite so let's see what that does
ready to Launch
3 two one go
[Music]
who oh but the core it's only hanging on
the core strands yes middle sheath is
offering a protective layer so it's not
like the middle layer is indestructible
no no of course not a but the core
strands barely got any damage yeah just
a tiny bit Yeah so while this middle
layer was adding extra protection for
the Rope it was still eventually cut
right outside of the camera frame
sorry 3 2 one
go it's about does it hold in this
scenario or not mhm so we are kind of
deducting from this test setup that it
does perform significantly better than
normal inline rope with the same
diameter so if you look in keeping the
same weight of the rope and same handle
you will get an extra safety margin on
top but the thing is something that you
need to be aware of just because you
have an extra safety margin doesn't mean
it will absolutely not break this is
no so a very interesting design indeed
and while I'm still waiting for
completely indestructible middle
layer there was something that had
actually even bigger impact on the cut
resistance so instead of having the Rope
safely attached to the beam I came up
with a brilliant idea to attach it to
myself no I'm I'm curious if it will
break when I will be L yeah no I think
um it won't yeah because Dynamics also
play a big role so but let's say I I
panic as a bler and I take really hard
will it break that we will find
out so let's say
what I'm afraid is that I will jump and
I will end up there and then it will
break and I will fall yeah that would
suck CIA was nice to meet you H any any
last
words
um for science okay
ano I see some anxiety sweat PS go okay
3 2 1
so my plan was to take during the fall
and at the same time go down to cause as
hard catch as possible however since I
was belaying with a tube raising my hand
up was causing the Rope to slide through
the blay device way too much but the
Rope was still damaged now for the
second attempt I decided to not take and
just go down
okay so for the climber it was a force
of
2.98 so almost 3 kons in our previous
experiments where we had the Rope
attached to the beam ropes were breaking
at slightly higher forces so to match
that since now we have a little bit of
extra rope we decided to slightly
increase the fall
yeah you were too fast then so yeah I've
heard that dying is against YouTube
monetization policy especially in front
of so many cameras so I'm glad I didn't
but since my timing was meh let's try
again 2
1
[Applause]
yes I guess my climber did not VI that
was beautiful B where is my
climber it actually broke not on the
first impact I felt like I caught it and
then it was sliding and then it broke
and then I had like T and
P nice okay now we tried the same but I
will uh delay softly ready
y three 2 1 now for the soft catch since
I was belaying with the tube my idea was
to Simply let the Rope slide through it
however my timing was Mech again I
couldn't see the climber okay don't
judge huh
nothing that's so cool so first let me
give you the force 2.3 so 2.3 it's
really nothing huh it's so chronics
nothing nothing nothing nothing what not
even abrasion
what absolutely
nothing we the wrong
side yeah yeah it burned that is crazy
it just burned a little bit on top but I
would still climb with this rope yeah
totally I was almost sure that it will
not break but I was not expecting to the
difference to be that drastic yeah all
right so far we explore the dangers of
sharp rocks but another massive danger
comes from sharp climbing equipment this
is for example in the climbing gym in
the first caribiner oh the very very
first quick draw in the gym was sharp
and it cut somebody's rope mhm the Rope
went like like this in the Carabiner and
then up as you can imagine the climbing
gym and so it sharpened it in a really
bad way and for many many years maybe uh
no one Dropped In in the first Quick
Draw also no one inspected it in the gym
the person fell into the first Quick
Draw and then the the Rope ripped so
what is this test well we're cutting
ropes once again this time we're
dropping the ropes over a sharp
Carabiner it has a very sharp edge
actually yeah you would
notice if something like this would be
out there three two one
go you have to see this yeah it looks
again very violent my God that one that
was not something I was expecting 3 2 1
go
I think Bing it is oh it's so scary how
it goes like for like 2 3 seconds goes
zoom and then just boms it explodes now
assuming the Rope would not fail this
test was set to produce around 3 and A2
ktons to the climber so again imitating
real life
scenarios oh my God that happened
happens so fast it's not getting any
better right still
terrifying is it for you yeah it's
shocking honestly like it it's such a
violent
explosion horrible gives me nightmares
and 9.8 we
go wow the Rope uh it survived but it's
uh yeah it's pretty
damaged I want to show you something
because of this
impact you create so much
friction that actually this is like a
part that melted it's like a little cap
so this thing melted on the Carabiner
and then the rest of the Rope was just
going over it so it kind of created a
protective uh piece of material that the
rest of the Rope was sliding over this
rope we know that it can break but but
sometimes it can also hold so it's like
a little bit of a
[Music]
gamble all right next 10.2 mm monster
[Music]
rope so yeah sometimes more is better
but in case you want
less here is a new construction
rope first it cut through the outer shf
it failed here but the sharp edge was
traveling along the longitudinal side of
the rope and kept on damaging but there
um the middle Chef was protecting the co
strand so this was good the craziest
thing that this is this is fabric this
is textile mhm and we are falling on it
and it's holding and comes back like
this coming back is always the most
fascinating thing for me if you load it
and you put it on the table and you see
it shrinking back slowly it lives H you
should name your rope you can write a
comment what name you give to your rope
we're curious the name with the most up
votes will get a free rope from
mammut is that the case that' be cool
let just's make that happen okay yeah
that's that's
that so for whom is this
rope for a sailor for sailor a nice
wooden
boat yeah it matches
then ah we are talking not about this
we're talking about this rope so should
I buy this rope for going to the cracks
or it has a different intent for whom
this rope is actually mountaineering
Ridge climbing multi-pitch climbing
where yeah there are a lot of sharp
edges also maybe ice climbing is where
you maneuver with a lot of Sharp Tools
already single pitch climbing yeah sport
climbing Trad climbing do you really
need it I would say hey it depends on
the route why wouldn't I want this in a
crack will it last less long is it less
durable since the sheath is you said a
little bit thinner yeah so you have a
little bit less uh sheath since we had
to make room for the aramid uh shf did
you run this through your abrasion
testing machine yes we saw a decrease
but you know in German we have the
saying that you want theing Theo so you
want
and a a pig that has wool and is also
laying eggs so you want you want an a
all overall package that does not exist
so this is kind of the thing with robes
you can't have it all at once so that
was a journey which makes me really
curious to see what's coming next and
what rope names you going to put down in
the comments and also making this video
took me over 3 months many locations and
many smart humans helping
me so probably not the best strategy for
a successful YouTube business and it
would definitely not be possible without
kind people supporting me on my patreon
and in other
means so I send a lot of low gravity
days to these kind of people these kind
of kind people and thank you for
watching and see you in the next next
one