podunkclimber
Jul 30, 2003, 4:27 AM
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Registered: Mar 5, 2003
Posts: 56
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I love those things, especially for ice climbing, and I just came across the thread at the bottom of the trad page, but didn't have the patience to read all the way through it. The quote posted there from Yate's earlier contribution on a similar discusson was awesome. He really put it very eloquently.
As far as the stats posted on the Yates site about forces generated in falls of different fall actor, and larger forces generated for smaller fall factors. In my humble professional opinion I would say Yate's data is accurate, fall factors are really just a shooting from the hip guestimate of the forces that may be generated in a fall. The reason the data seems fishy is because we all assume that things change uniformly in a predictable way, and most of the time they don't. The technical term for this is, the assumption of linearity, and it can throw many people of. Including engineers, and scientist
The truth of the matter is, that in any fall, even one generated in a lab, the amount of variables that must be accounted for is larger than we think. In testing situations we simplify the system as much as possible, and do our best to take accurate measurments, but things that suprise us still happen. My best guess with the Yate's data, is that the relationship of the fall length, to rope lenght, and the load limiting ability of the screamer hits a funny little spot where things just don't happen like we think they should. I bet it is a really interesting problem to see it worked out analytically, if it can be at all.
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