Back when I started out in electronics that would have been "cycles per second per second" or "cpsps." Then they took away centigrade and made it Celsius and cps and made it Hertz. That hurt.
I think the Department of Redunancy Department is out of their jurisdiction on this one. That's a valid unit of measurement, but used incorrectly. So the Department of Incorrect is taking over the investigation.
I love how how y'all really do the math and then also demonstrate to see how it compares. I think you did a great job explaining the myriad of variables like fall distance, time, rope length, additional slings / hardware, rope specs, and type. I also think y'alls scientific method is very good and thoughtfully executed. Great video!
The term you're looking for is "Jerk," in math speak it's the second derivative of velocity. In other terms, acceleration is how fast velocity is changing, and jerk is how fast acceleration is changing. The longer the amount of time HELD at an acceleration is actually WORSE, but the longer the amount of time taken to reach that peak acceleration is better. Your body can handle HUGE accelerations for tiny amounts of time, as it doesn't change the relative velocities of different parts of your body very much.
Thank you for bringing up the sample rate point, as some one that used to break stuff for a living it's good to know you are fully understanding what's going on with your testing!
Measuring stuff is difficult and a very huge part of physics and engineering. And those little things matter so much. As an example, i had a client with double head circular saw for cutting windows and door frames (two cuts at the same time). Most cuts are 45 degrees. And to cut the proper length, you have to insert the exact width of the part, machine will slide heads to the proper place and make the cut. And he claimed his saw was not cutting proper lengths with angle cuts. Interesting thing was that straight cuts were perfectly in tolerance. So i asked customer what width he is putting into the computer, and he said - the correct one, from the spreadsheet. The problem was that parts were also painted... and thickness of the paint was making a couple mm error in the length of the final product. And spreadsheet was giving dimentions of bare material, without a paint.
This is just the video I've been hoping for! I use a semi-static rope for TRS, typically with a single device such as the Taz Lov 2 or CT Rollnlock, and backup knots. I've often wondered about just how unpleasant my day would become if I fell a few meters to the backup knot. It should be fine, but I'm still hoping I never have to find out. Keep up the science'ing my man, you're doing a great job!
@9:54, some excel beta: If you are looking to sample from the largest in your loadcell, excel has LARGE() and ROW() to help identify this (the syntax for sheets works differently). That you can plug in your array, lets call that A2:A100000 into: =LARGE(A2:A100000, ROW(1:N) ) This will return the N largest numbers. But wait! There is more. You can find the mean of this sub array. =AVERAGE( LARGE(A2:A100000, ROW(1:N) ) )
Hey Ryan (and all others). I unreservedly apologise for my brief and unhelpful comment on your video about sample rate all those years ago. No excuses. Keep up the great work. Richard.
At 4:10 you mentioned the difference between steel weight and body in fall tests. I just read an alpine safety classic book by Pit Schubert (it's German, so hard to recommend). There the Author mentions that the difference between testing with steel weights and a real body is about 50% (at fall factor 1). That may be an interesting topic for you to explore. Maybe you could even come up with a better test object than a steel weight. Let's say some sandbag with a harness on or something.
@@jimihenrik11 does the book give any data? Reference any studies? 50% sounds like a guess rather than an actual tested number. Especially given the forces involved, a few percentage points can make a big difference, so rounding to 50% isn't good practice and it doubt it was exactly 50. I'd also find it a little hard to believe it's that high of a difference. The human body is mostly water and does have an ability to absorb forces but 50% is huge.
The concept makes sense since a body will flex and slump to take some of the shock out as opposed to a steel weight which does not flex or slump over a harness, taking some shock.
I used to work in the elevator trade / lift engineering and your drop tower reminds me of an “inside joke” that goes: If you ever fall down the hoistway, grab the end of the electrical cord and throw into the hoistway to entangle on something.
the 23 Hz isn't really right you need double the sampling rate of the frequency contends of the pulse. So the best way for you is to over-sample a lot to make sure not to miss the event. This is like deep EE. Cold you provide the raw data(like shown in the video (the csv or excelsheet)), so we can determine the actual frequency of the fall. This is a realy fun data acquisition problem .
This. More sampling is best here. More data better. If you want to catch a 20hz signal you MUST sample at 40Hz a a MINIMUM. Look up Nyquist. Tat 550Hz for the fall factor 1 on the drop tower is wrong. It actually needs 1100Hz to catch, again, per Nyquist. There's some complex math in here, bare knuckles EE stuff, but it's real.
I thought their methodology was pretty good. And 40 is almost double 23. I'm guessing they got very very close. You could probably do some interpolation and get a bit closer still.
Worst case scarily would be a square wave where peak force lasted for t seconds. If you then sample at 1/t you’d always pick up the peak (well - I’d recommend 1/t*1.00001 to play it safe). Don’t forget, we’re not trying to reconstruct the square wave (which would require infinite sampling) only to pick up the maximum (which requires less sampling than a sine wave)
Not sure if you've done this; I'd love to see a video on the force seen on the climber and on each piece of gear when sequentially blowing trad gear. At 7:00, you say "you would blow that piece of gear and fall on your next one, generating even more force." Maybe I'm not correctly understanding what was said (and maybe it also only applies to static ropes), but I would think the first piece of gear would see the greatest force and each subsequent piece would see less since the force of your fall is being partially absorbed when the gear pops (i.e. assuming reasonably closely spaced gear).
What your looking for as a metric for "bone breakage" is impulse (average impact force)! "impulse = mass * change in velocity" so if you're falling at x velocity and stopping to 0 that will give you a fixed term for the impulse of any one person's mass. This is basically the change in momentum the person will see across the fall. Also "Impulse = Force * change in time" so if you increase the time taken for the momentum change, you decrease the force on the person's body.
@@therflash sort of but force isn't the full story. It's easier to think of it like this, saying peak force is like saying i went 100mph in a car. Factually true, but if you got to 100mph in 30 seconds, you wouldn't feel much. but if you went 100mph in 1.9 seconds, your stomach is gonna be in your throat.
If you have to climbing on a static, put the belayer about 50ft away from the base of the climb so you have way more rope in the system. This is the same on a second pitch, make the hanging belay well below the anchor
Safety harness gear have this part of sown rope which is supposed to break in case if a fall and lessen the peak force when falling in static rope. Might be interesting to test how well those work!
Climbers have a similar thing (Yates screamer), but it's more to protect gear placements. Maybe throwing one of those into your system could make leading with a static rope in a pickle safer?
I would love to see a test where the first "piece" breaks or blows at a certain force, recording the force on a piece below that. Probably a nightmare to set up as a repeatable and comparable test, but I always wondered what the numbers are.
A lot of work and thought on this one - makes me want to carry an extra Volta or other fully dynamic backup. I'm too old to shake off a "semi-static" whip of size. That 700 footer was awesome to see! Yeah, the sampling rate and true anchoring methods add credibility to the peak no.'s. 👍
I’ve jumped off a bridge with static rope ( one strand 5’ longer in a combat repel exercise in the military) - I survived, but my back still aches when I think about it…
Arborists climb on ropes that are super static. We really try and stay before 2.5%... all of our elasticity comes from rope in the system and dynamic flex in the trees we use as anchors
2:49 back of the envelop physics backs this idea up. the kN you impart on the rope are going to be a direct result of how much acceleration you got before you "hit" the rope. the longer you are in free fall, the larger the force for a given mass (your body). but it also seems that how much rope in the system plays a huge role too, which seems to be why people talk about the factor so much. a short length of rope getting hit a little bit hard seems to be about the same "safety" level as a very long piece of rope getting hit very hard. this makes sense because the longer the rope, the more stretch, and the more time the rope has to slow you down while stretching.
I'd love to see testing like this, but use an ATC with a person holding the brake hand (with a belay glove to prevent hand burns) for the belay device instead of the Grigri. Because, I don't use Grigri for belaying lead climbing (except on slow aid climbing pitches), and I would never use a Grigri for lead belay when I had to lead on a "static" rope. When I have led on "static" rope, I made sure my belayer had the bare minimum belay device friction to get the job done (like a figure 8 in "sport" mode). BTW, for short falls on "static" rope, body compliance makes a big difference in peak force, but you already know this when you did your short falls on slings connected directly to bolts.
I know a guy who fell something like 70 feet on a static rappel, his prusik slipped until the last like 15 feet where it caught and broke his back, the rope and prusik were made of the improper material and slipped against each other, he broke his back and got flight for life out of there
You make an interesting argument at 5:12 that high forces on the body are less bad when they build up slowly. This doesn’t sound right to me, in previous videos you’ve shown that various items break at roughly the same force on the drop tower and slow pull machine. Why would it be different for a body? Surely pain is directly proportional force
I think your body reacts by engaging core and muscles, providing shock absorption, a fast force will get you before your body tenses and go straight to your joints and back
@@largeformatlandscape Good point, seems like it needs testing. I think Ryan should take a series of ~6kN falls on increasingly static lines and make a graph of the resulting bruises
I had the same question, but Benjamin Lovelady elsewhere in the comments pointed out that increasing the force gradually gives your body time to get in a better position for withstanding the force.
As a canyoner. If it’s all you have, it beats pancaking…. If it’s an emergency situation and you need to escape, you will die if you stay where you are, you can free climb and die if you fall, or you can climb trad with static & maybe end up with life with a potential spinal cord injury. I’ll take life, even if it involves tons of crappy stuff.
On the 5 by 5 feet versus 50 by 50 feet, I would wager the 50 will show up slightly less force due to aero drag. But I hope to be pleasantly surprised when you post that vid.
@@dmitripogosian5084 You do not reach terminal velocity but enough for aero to start having an effect. And as speed is nowhere near the velocities where it starts to affect results on impact it should be the same. To understand this I'd recommend doing the math that results in the fall factor equation and not the fall factor equation as that is a simplified version for climbers that should never do complex math while hanging from a rope. So weight falling in gravity suspended by a rigid rope and spring system, preferably formulaic without values. And you can ignore aero at first and include it later to see the difference.
@@dragoscoco2173 So, neglecting air drag. I fall from height H equal the length of the rope L, My kinetic energy when rope starts to stretch is mV^2/2 = m g H, is equal to 1/2 k x^2 where x is the maximum stretch and k is spring constant. So we get maximum stretch being equal to x^2= 2 mg H/k. However spring constant itself is inverse proportional to the length of the rope, which is height of our fall, so k ~ 1/H., and we conclude that we stretch is proportional to height x ~ H. But the maximum force is F =k x ( Hooke's law), so F ~ x/H and is independent on fall height H. But if we take longer fall, kinetic energy will be a bit less than mgH due to air drag, so x and force will be a bit less. Is that what you mean ?
@@dmitripogosian5084 Pretty much this. As usual everything is a bit more complex in reality but it should agree to experimental results quite well. Nice work. As to things hard to predict and compute I find that rope has damping properties (never specified) and those are sometimes speed dependent, also they do max out at some point and change the properties of the rope due to temperature.
great job big no doubt hope Ur channel grows huge I once broke my back in 7 places in a 30 to 35 foot fall and slightly over ten yrs later feel like I'm recovering
Would love a video discussing what happens to someone in a harness when they are subjected to various amounts of force. Like, if my harness is rated to 22kN, what would actually happen to me if I experienced a force of 22kN on my belay loop? I realise it's not something you can feasibly test, but maybe you could talk to someone who knows physiology…?
are you still working on testing for factor 1 and 2 falls for multipitch id love some info on the forces and dangers on harnesses bolts and other gear as thers no information on it
Have you tested impact forces on different materials? For example your non-human test was a hunk of metal. what forces do you get with equivalent masses of bag of sand vs a human? If the sand is more similar (I imagine it would be) then non-human tests should be done with a bag of sand, no?
For a long fall aerodynamic drag becomes a factor. For a very long fall "terminal" velocity, the speed at which aerodynamic drag equals weight, enters the equation. If you have enough elastic rope, at the same end as the weight, to handle that energy you should be good.
I have that same yellow with orange/green tracer dynamic 9.8 Sterling rope. Everytime I bust it out at a crag someone has too make fun of the color lol.
I would love to see some tests geared more towards saddle hunting. Most climb with static rope and your anchor point is in some shape or form girth hitched onto a tree, this means while climbing up, your tether will be around your knees or feet and I’m curious how a fall like this would be
A falling climber on a static rope should get a pretty bad amount of g-force, from the sudden stop. But is it enough to main or kill? can you check G ratings?
It shouldn't matter too much how much time it takes for the force to be applied. What would matter is how long the impulse needs to be applied. The point of a dynamic rope is that it stretches to allow you to keep on falling applying a smaller force to slow you down the same amount but over a longer time.
What about static ropes like the petzl RAD/PUR lines, especially compared to something like the Edelrid rap line which is designed to do the same thing but has a "dynamic reserve".
it's crazy how close those peak load numbers are to rope's mbs (with knots) - you barely have x2 safety factor. So basicly its dynamic properties, whatever they are, is the only reason it can survive a fall on it
wondering if somebody made a harness that has built in a small rope spool and friction joint to act as a „fall airbag“. Whenever the force exceeds a limit, it would pay out from the spool. Matched with the climbers weight, it limits the g-force (until the spool runs out). 2-3m of g-limited fall might get you all over the high g peak and change back broken to it was a bit uncomfortable… Combined with a spring returned one way clutch, it would auto reset after a fall and no more tension on the rope, so that a climber can continue their way but still have the safety of the airbag for subsecent falls.
That grigri to bolt is certainly “conservative”. I’d love to see how much lower the peak forces would be with a squishy human belayer and harness anchoring the grigri. Not that it would make it ok to whip on static line, but I suspect peak loads would be (statistically) significantly lower.
10:17 to be fair, at 40Hz you would've gotten only a couple samples at the peak, which IMO leaves a fair bit of doubt about higher frequency forces. of course now you can reproduce the test at a higher sample rate, measure the frequencies, and retroactively confirm that 40Hz was valid. but at the time, without the benefit of the low frequency data available, I think it made sense to question it. one of those annoying chicken and egg problems where 40Hz was super good enough, but you could only verify that *after* getting something way faster
Some hardcore big wallers I know ,(not me) always use a lead rope for hauling... just in case the main lead gets damaged. They don't want to be forced to lead on a static...
i was once route building, on a dynamic rope, i knotted the rope at the top to reduce the stretch when building, now on the last 3 meters i was working and some test climbing and i had maybe 1m-1.5m slack on the last 2m from the anchor, yep that was not a pleasure
falling off several quickdraws up is really the best case scenario for lead climbing, so i doubt it should be considered for safety concerns.. someone could deside 6kn on semistatic is survivable "to get out of a pickle", climb, fall at first piece and break the shit out of something with high factor fall, not cool
the thing about force over time best way I found to explain it is this if you stop in a car you stop over time if you run into a brick wall you stop quickly have a great day :)
We do not climb trees with dynamic ropes. Only statics ...I'd say same as canyoneering. But free climbing lead ...you don't want to run out more than 7 feet
Did you bring up climbing top rope with semi static? in your ice climbing video they using semi static for top rope, that should be safe as long you are under tension
So in emergency it's better to climb without rope than with static rope? Without a rope if you fall you will die, with static rope you break your back, and you die slowly in pain or the line just snap.
this generates a lot of questions about the differences between dynamic rope cows tails and sling/cord made personal anchor systems. does it really make a difference when they are as short as the are? plus you are tying knots on the rope and reducing its strength while there are other systems that do't require knots. I've used both on work, but I've never fallen so can't say 😅 Friendly reminder: always work with a backup fall-arrest system that dissipates the force. Don't get yourselves killed at work, that's too sad. at least do it on the mountains🤙🏻
I disagree, the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem is about reconstructing sine waves. This is about just measuring the magnitude. If it is long enough so the peek force is 1/23 of a second you only need to sample at that rate to get at least a single sample for when it s at the peek force.
Thanks for your great videos. I'm interested in Numbers when children fall into a robe lead-climbing. Because of the weight, the robe will not stretch as much, and do the falls have a higher fall factor than?
Used to work construction, guys used worse than a static rope. Was an old woven rope, nothing close to modern. They were 4 floors up, and I was just like, yeah guys, you're DEFINITLY safe.....
Our data is on our blog www.hownot2.com/post/static-whippers
We now sell Linescales at our new store hownot2.store/linescale
What happened to the other channel? I was looking for the awesome intro, and I get this instead.
The Department Of Redundancy Department fully supports your usage of "hz per second"!
Back when I started out in electronics that would have been "cycles per second per second" or "cpsps." Then they took away centigrade and made it Celsius and cps and made it Hertz. That hurt.
That would be a correct unit to measure how fast a frequency is changing.
@@angrybirder9983 how derivative
I think the Department of Redunancy Department is out of their jurisdiction on this one. That's a valid unit of measurement, but used incorrectly. So the Department of Incorrect is taking over the investigation.
Yeah.
Not at all a correct unit of measure as used here.
I love how how y'all really do the math and then also demonstrate to see how it compares. I think you did a great job explaining the myriad of variables like fall distance, time, rope length, additional slings / hardware, rope specs, and type. I also think y'alls scientific method is very good and thoughtfully executed. Great video!
I would love to see full-on research papers on these topics for those of us who are more academically inclined!
The term you're looking for is "Jerk," in math speak it's the second derivative of velocity. In other terms, acceleration is how fast velocity is changing, and jerk is how fast acceleration is changing. The longer the amount of time HELD at an acceleration is actually WORSE, but the longer the amount of time taken to reach that peak acceleration is better. Your body can handle HUGE accelerations for tiny amounts of time, as it doesn't change the relative velocities of different parts of your body very much.
Wow I guess I do math more than I thought
Neat, today I learned.
Thank you for bringing up the sample rate point, as some one that used to break stuff for a living it's good to know you are fully understanding what's going on with your testing!
Measuring stuff is difficult and a very huge part of physics and engineering. And those little things matter so much.
As an example, i had a client with double head circular saw for cutting windows and door frames (two cuts at the same time). Most cuts are 45 degrees. And to cut the proper length, you have to insert the exact width of the part, machine will slide heads to the proper place and make the cut.
And he claimed his saw was not cutting proper lengths with angle cuts. Interesting thing was that straight cuts were perfectly in tolerance. So i asked customer what width he is putting into the computer, and he said - the correct one, from the spreadsheet. The problem was that parts were also painted... and thickness of the paint was making a couple mm error in the length of the final product. And spreadsheet was giving dimentions of bare material, without a paint.
I am super impressed you learning digital sampling empirically. You will hear things like “Nyquist” frequency etc. but you are learning by doing.
This is just the video I've been hoping for! I use a semi-static rope for TRS, typically with a single device such as the Taz Lov 2 or CT Rollnlock, and backup knots. I've often wondered about just how unpleasant my day would become if I fell a few meters to the backup knot. It should be fine, but I'm still hoping I never have to find out.
Keep up the science'ing my man, you're doing a great job!
@9:54, some excel beta:
If you are looking to sample from the largest in your loadcell, excel has LARGE() and ROW() to help identify this (the syntax for sheets works differently).
That you can plug in your array, lets call that A2:A100000 into:
=LARGE(A2:A100000, ROW(1:N) )
This will return the N largest numbers.
But wait! There is more. You can find the mean of this sub array.
=AVERAGE(
LARGE(A2:A100000, ROW(1:N) )
)
Ive never been rock climbing and dont think i ever will, but i find your videos incredibly interesting and fun to watch! Keep up the good work!
Hey Ryan (and all others). I unreservedly apologise for my brief and unhelpful comment on your video about sample rate all those years ago. No excuses. Keep up the great work. Richard.
Thanks. I appreciate that.
dude this is one of the best videos you’ve made, i love it!
At 4:10 you mentioned the difference between steel weight and body in fall tests. I just read an alpine safety classic book by Pit Schubert (it's German, so hard to recommend). There the Author mentions that the difference between testing with steel weights and a real body is about 50% (at fall factor 1). That may be an interesting topic for you to explore. Maybe you could even come up with a better test object than a steel weight. Let's say some sandbag with a harness on or something.
What fall length was that for ? I can't believe it would be the same for 1m/1m vs 10m/10m (both FF1).
@@serges201 in the book it says that a steel weight will generate a 50% higher impact at fall factor 1 for the same height.
@@jimihenrik11 does the book give any data? Reference any studies? 50% sounds like a guess rather than an actual tested number.
Especially given the forces involved, a few percentage points can make a big difference, so rounding to 50% isn't good practice and it doubt it was exactly 50.
I'd also find it a little hard to believe it's that high of a difference. The human body is mostly water and does have an ability to absorb forces but 50% is huge.
The concept makes sense since a body will flex and slump to take some of the shock out as opposed to a steel weight which does not flex or slump over a harness, taking some shock.
I used to work in the elevator trade / lift engineering and your drop tower reminds me of an “inside joke” that goes: If you ever fall down the hoistway, grab the end of the electrical cord and throw into the hoistway to entangle on something.
Thanks!
Thanks!
the 23 Hz isn't really right you need double the sampling rate of the frequency contends of the pulse. So the best way for you is to over-sample a lot to make sure not to miss the event. This is like deep EE. Cold you provide the raw data(like shown in the video (the csv or excelsheet)), so we can determine the actual frequency of the fall. This is a realy fun data acquisition problem .
This. More sampling is best here. More data better. If you want to catch a 20hz signal you MUST sample at 40Hz a a MINIMUM. Look up Nyquist. Tat 550Hz for the fall factor 1 on the drop tower is wrong. It actually needs 1100Hz to catch, again, per Nyquist. There's some complex math in here, bare knuckles EE stuff, but it's real.
I thought their methodology was pretty good. And 40 is almost double 23. I'm guessing they got very very close. You could probably do some interpolation and get a bit closer still.
@@tomgnyc it was super good enough!!
This exact problem is solved in audio engineering, it’s called Nyquists law, you need to sample at 2x the fastest signal you’re measuring
Worst case scarily would be a square wave where peak force lasted for t seconds. If you then sample at 1/t you’d always pick up the peak (well - I’d recommend 1/t*1.00001 to play it safe). Don’t forget, we’re not trying to reconstruct the square wave (which would require infinite sampling) only to pick up the maximum (which requires less sampling than a sine wave)
Not sure if you've done this; I'd love to see a video on the force seen on the climber and on each piece of gear when sequentially blowing trad gear. At 7:00, you say "you would blow that piece of gear and fall on your next one, generating even more force." Maybe I'm not correctly understanding what was said (and maybe it also only applies to static ropes), but I would think the first piece of gear would see the greatest force and each subsequent piece would see less since the force of your fall is being partially absorbed when the gear pops (i.e. assuming reasonably closely spaced gear).
What your looking for as a metric for "bone breakage" is impulse (average impact force)! "impulse = mass * change in velocity" so if you're falling at x velocity and stopping to 0 that will give you a fixed term for the impulse of any one person's mass. This is basically the change in momentum the person will see across the fall. Also "Impulse = Force * change in time" so if you increase the time taken for the momentum change, you decrease the force on the person's body.
I may not have enough knowledge about this, but isn't this just force with extra steps?
@@therflash sort of but force isn't the full story. It's easier to think of it like this, saying peak force is like saying i went 100mph in a car. Factually true, but if you got to 100mph in 30 seconds, you wouldn't feel much. but if you went 100mph in 1.9 seconds, your stomach is gonna be in your throat.
@@therflash Force is change of impulse per time. F = dp/dt
If you have to climbing on a static, put the belayer about 50ft away from the base of the climb so you have way more rope in the system. This is the same on a second pitch, make the hanging belay well below the anchor
This one has me laughing along with great info I've always wondered about. Thanks for all you do!
Idk if you guys upgraded your camera, but the filming quality of this episode looks great!
Safety harness gear have this part of sown rope which is supposed to break in case if a fall and lessen the peak force when falling in static rope.
Might be interesting to test how well those work!
Climbers have a similar thing (Yates screamer), but it's more to protect gear placements. Maybe throwing one of those into your system could make leading with a static rope in a pickle safer?
I would love to see a test where the first "piece" breaks or blows at a certain force, recording the force on a piece below that. Probably a nightmare to set up as a repeatable and comparable test, but I always wondered what the numbers are.
Would love to see some arborist rope tests, xstatic,drenaline,tango ivy, Cheryl bomb just to name a few. love the channel
A lot of work and thought on this one - makes me want to carry an extra Volta or other fully dynamic backup. I'm too old to shake off a "semi-static" whip of size. That 700 footer was awesome to see! Yeah, the sampling rate and true anchoring methods add credibility to the peak no.'s. 👍
I’ve jumped off a bridge with static rope ( one strand 5’ longer in a combat repel exercise in the military) - I survived, but my back still aches when I think about it…
I love the personification of the RUclips comment section.
Arborists climb on ropes that are super static. We really try and stay before 2.5%... all of our elasticity comes from rope in the system and dynamic flex in the trees we use as anchors
This video is hilarious lol
Does using a more static rope increase your hurtz?
I'd love to see drop test results on one strand of double and twin rope !!! Thank you again for your work
2:49 back of the envelop physics backs this idea up. the kN you impart on the rope are going to be a direct result of how much acceleration you got before you "hit" the rope. the longer you are in free fall, the larger the force for a given mass (your body). but it also seems that how much rope in the system plays a huge role too, which seems to be why people talk about the factor so much. a short length of rope getting hit a little bit hard seems to be about the same "safety" level as a very long piece of rope getting hit very hard. this makes sense because the longer the rope, the more stretch, and the more time the rope has to slow you down while stretching.
I'd love to see testing like this, but use an ATC with a person holding the brake hand (with a belay glove to prevent hand burns) for the belay device instead of the Grigri. Because, I don't use Grigri for belaying lead climbing (except on slow aid climbing pitches), and I would never use a Grigri for lead belay when I had to lead on a "static" rope. When I have led on "static" rope, I made sure my belayer had the bare minimum belay device friction to get the job done (like a figure 8 in "sport" mode). BTW, for short falls on "static" rope, body compliance makes a big difference in peak force, but you already know this when you did your short falls on slings connected directly to bolts.
I know a guy who fell something like 70 feet on a static rappel, his prusik slipped until the last like 15 feet where it caught and broke his back, the rope and prusik were made of the improper material and slipped against each other, he broke his back and got flight for life out of there
Anyone who's played Fleeing the Complex from the Henry Stickmen games knows what might happen
Your vids are getting g way better, Ryan.
You make an interesting argument at 5:12 that high forces on the body are less bad when they build up slowly. This doesn’t sound right to me, in previous videos you’ve shown that various items break at roughly the same force on the drop tower and slow pull machine. Why would it be different for a body? Surely pain is directly proportional force
I think your body reacts by engaging core and muscles, providing shock absorption, a fast force will get you before your body tenses and go straight to your joints and back
@@largeformatlandscape Good point, seems like it needs testing. I think Ryan should take a series of ~6kN falls on increasingly static lines and make a graph of the resulting bruises
@@largeformatlandscape The time derivative of acceleration "Jerk" is a measurement that can be used to quantify this.
I had the same question, but Benjamin Lovelady elsewhere in the comments pointed out that increasing the force gradually gives your body time to get in a better position for withstanding the force.
As a canyoner. If it’s all you have, it beats pancaking…. If it’s an emergency situation and you need to escape, you will die if you stay where you are, you can free climb and die if you fall, or you can climb trad with static & maybe end up with life with a potential spinal cord injury. I’ll take life, even if it involves tons of crappy stuff.
On the 5 by 5 feet versus 50 by 50 feet, I would wager the 50 will show up slightly less force due to aero drag. But I hope to be pleasantly surprised when you post that vid.
On a five feet drop you do not yet reach terminal velocity, your speed of fall will be faster after 50 feet fall
@@dmitripogosian5084 You do not reach terminal velocity but enough for aero to start having an effect.
And as speed is nowhere near the velocities where it starts to affect results on impact it should be the same.
To understand this I'd recommend doing the math that results in the fall factor equation and not the fall factor equation as that is a simplified version for climbers that should never do complex math while hanging from a rope.
So weight falling in gravity suspended by a rigid rope and spring system, preferably formulaic without values. And you can ignore aero at first and include it later to see the difference.
@@dragoscoco2173 So, neglecting air drag. I fall from height H equal the length of the rope L, My kinetic energy when rope starts to stretch is mV^2/2 = m g H, is equal to 1/2 k x^2 where x is the maximum stretch and k is spring constant. So we get maximum stretch being equal to x^2= 2 mg H/k. However spring constant itself is inverse proportional to the length of the rope, which is height of our fall, so k ~ 1/H., and we conclude that we stretch is proportional to height x ~ H. But the maximum force is F =k x ( Hooke's law), so F ~ x/H and is independent on fall height H. But if we take longer fall, kinetic energy will be a bit less than mgH due to air drag, so x and force will be a bit less. Is that what you mean ?
@@dmitripogosian5084 Pretty much this. As usual everything is a bit more complex in reality but it should agree to experimental results quite well. Nice work. As to things hard to predict and compute I find that rope has damping properties (never specified) and those are sometimes speed dependent, also they do max out at some point and change the properties of the rope due to temperature.
great job big no doubt hope Ur channel grows huge I once broke my back in 7 places in a 30 to 35 foot fall and slightly over ten yrs later feel like I'm recovering
Look at you getting all snazzy with produ ction value and such. Love it Ryan!
Excellent presentation and explanation! Love it.
This is so important! Thank you for sharing 🌻
Would love a video discussing what happens to someone in a harness when they are subjected to various amounts of force. Like, if my harness is rated to 22kN, what would actually happen to me if I experienced a force of 22kN on my belay loop? I realise it's not something you can feasibly test, but maybe you could talk to someone who knows physiology…?
Ur back is not happy
are you still working on testing for factor 1 and 2 falls for multipitch id love some info on the forces and dangers on harnesses bolts and other gear as thers no information on it
Have you done tests involving blown gear? Like what happens if a piece blows during a fall and you fall to the next piece
Have you tested impact forces on different materials? For example your non-human test was a hunk of metal. what forces do you get with equivalent masses of bag of sand vs a human? If the sand is more similar (I imagine it would be) then non-human tests should be done with a bag of sand, no?
For a long fall aerodynamic drag becomes a factor. For a very long fall "terminal" velocity, the speed at which aerodynamic drag equals weight, enters the equation. If you have enough elastic rope, at the same end as the weight, to handle that energy you should be good.
6:43 Why the hell does it say "30 kN" on the hanger if it bends / breaks at 8 ??
I have that same yellow with orange/green tracer dynamic 9.8 Sterling rope. Everytime I bust it out at a crag someone has too make fun of the color lol.
I would love to see some tests geared more towards saddle hunting. Most climb with static rope and your anchor point is in some shape or form girth hitched onto a tree, this means while climbing up, your tether will be around your knees or feet and I’m curious how a fall like this would be
A falling climber on a static rope should get a pretty bad amount of g-force, from the sudden stop. But is it enough to main or kill? can you check G ratings?
Depends on the fall - might even be enough to snap the person in half.
It shouldn't matter too much how much time it takes for the force to be applied. What would matter is how long the impulse needs to be applied.
The point of a dynamic rope is that it stretches to allow you to keep on falling applying a smaller force to slow you down the same amount but over a longer time.
What about static ropes like the petzl RAD/PUR lines, especially compared to something like the Edelrid rap line which is designed to do the same thing but has a "dynamic reserve".
Or Beal Rando!
Was in a class and the instructors where preaching how important dressing knots is. Do you think you could test dressed vs undressed knots?
I feel like he's done this, to some degree, on figure 8 knots at least. But would love to see more knots tested for this.
I think the channel 'hard is easy' did some tests along those lines. If I remember correctly.
Please collab on something with Richard Delaney
This makes me wonder if I should use dynamic rope for my personal edge kit as a technical rescue tech in a large regional system.
it's crazy how close those peak load numbers are to rope's mbs (with knots) - you barely have x2 safety factor. So basicly its dynamic properties, whatever they are, is the only reason it can survive a fall on it
Super interesting info on the sampling rate, keep up the good work, this stuff is very cool
I don't see any tests for the Kong Energy Absorber. I'm curious about how it would work for lead rope soloing or some such.
yah ouch....
fell about 10+ feet in a swiss seat . hanging from a piece of sta-set x. has very low 2 percent stretch.
peed blood for a month.
Can you tell me more abot the difference and value of a static rope vice a strap and how to properly empoly straps (knotting and stiching teqinqes).
wondering if somebody made a harness that has built in a small rope spool and friction joint to act as a „fall airbag“. Whenever the force exceeds a limit, it would pay out from the spool. Matched with the climbers weight, it limits the g-force (until the spool runs out). 2-3m of g-limited fall might get you all over the high g peak and change back broken to it was a bit uncomfortable…
Combined with a spring returned one way clutch, it would auto reset after a fall and no more tension on the rope, so that a climber can continue their way but still have the safety of the airbag for subsecent falls.
Interesting vid. Thanks
That grigri to bolt is certainly “conservative”. I’d love to see how much lower the peak forces would be with a squishy human belayer and harness anchoring the grigri. Not that it would make it ok to whip on static line, but I suspect peak loads would be (statistically) significantly lower.
10:17 to be fair, at 40Hz you would've gotten only a couple samples at the peak, which IMO leaves a fair bit of doubt about higher frequency forces. of course now you can reproduce the test at a higher sample rate, measure the frequencies, and retroactively confirm that 40Hz was valid. but at the time, without the benefit of the low frequency data available, I think it made sense to question it. one of those annoying chicken and egg problems where 40Hz was super good enough, but you could only verify that *after* getting something way faster
Some hardcore big wallers I know ,(not me) always use a lead rope for hauling... just in case the main lead gets damaged. They don't want to be forced to lead on a static...
Can't get enough of this!! Great content
Recently got myself a static rope which I intended to use to start lead climbing. Guess I'm going to need to buy a dynamic one cause I like my back.
please please try strength test on dyneema rope from hercules ropes ! wanna see how good they are !
Love your channel. And I think you should do a collaboration with that "someone" who left a comment. Both of you are doing wonderful work.
i was once route building, on a dynamic rope, i knotted the rope at the top to reduce the stretch when building, now on the last 3 meters i was working and some test climbing and i had maybe 1m-1.5m slack on the last 2m from the anchor, yep that was not a pleasure
I loved the Hz discussion.
falling off several quickdraws up is really the best case scenario for lead climbing, so i doubt it should be considered for safety concerns.. someone could deside 6kn on semistatic is survivable "to get out of a pickle", climb, fall at first piece and break the shit out of something with high factor fall, not cool
1:02 clEARLY
9:25 40Hz per second? 40 samples per second per second? Thought I'd add to the hurtz
I just love yours sciences' brow!
I would be interested in a test on the Petzl Rad line … I used it for glacier traverse and falling in a crevasse with a static rope!? What happens !
the thing about force over time
best way I found to explain it is this
if you stop in a car you stop over time
if you run into a brick wall you stop quickly
have a great day :)
Really cool video!
Can you test some ferrata gear?
We do not climb trees with dynamic ropes. Only statics ...I'd say same as canyoneering. But free climbing lead ...you don't want to run out more than 7 feet
Did you bring up climbing top rope with semi static? in your ice climbing video they using semi static for top rope, that should be safe as long you are under tension
Top roping with semi-static is totally fine. Obviously you don’t want a bunch of slack but that’s a good belay helps with that
Love the intro man it was gold
You could save yourself a lot of time with formulas in excel, count max etc.
What if you were to whip on the Imlay canyon fire with some form of shock absorber?
I took a bit of a "whip" on a static rope. Wasn't even uncomfortable. However I didn't fall straight down. I was mostly a swing.
So in emergency it's better to climb without rope than with static rope? Without a rope if you fall you will die, with static rope you break your back, and you die slowly in pain or the line just snap.
All I use is static rope… never been on a dynamic rope.
But I’m always on an atc or figure 8
wait how can you fall twice the distance of rope you have in the system? like how is that possible? (can you provide an example?)
What about Samson Hawkeye 1/2 rope
Great that technology has advanced, since the “old days”. Fantastic equipment out there.
this generates a lot of questions about the differences between dynamic rope cows tails and sling/cord made personal anchor systems. does it really make a difference when they are as short as the are? plus you are tying knots on the rope and reducing its strength while there are other systems that do't require knots. I've used both on work, but I've never fallen so can't say 😅
Friendly reminder: always work with a backup fall-arrest system that dissipates the force. Don't get yourselves killed at work, that's too sad. at least do it on the mountains🤙🏻
Would be interesting if there are any fibers being developed with long delta-t ooblek or reverse ooblek type effect for rope being developed?
Going from pounds to kN makes me sweat and breaks my brain. Any chance of showing mass in non freedom units?
"non freedom units" :) But just divide by 4.5
great video. thank you
40Hz for 23Hz is not good enough. Good enough will be >= 46. But its close. Check the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem.
I disagree, the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem is about reconstructing sine waves. This is about just measuring the magnitude. If it is long enough so the peek force is 1/23 of a second you only need to sample at that rate to get at least a single sample for when it s at the peek force.
The unit "Hz per second" measures a change of frequency. therfore saying "we were reading at 40 Hz per second " doesnt mean anything
That's why we use a asapsorber with static rope with rope access
Thanks for your great videos. I'm interested in Numbers when children fall into a robe lead-climbing. Because of the weight, the robe will not stretch as much, and do the falls have a higher fall factor than?
to my knowledge, fall factor is not dependent on anything but height and rope length. but the force could be higher, would be interesting to see.
@@spud_67 Yep, and to add: less weight = less force. It will be plenty soft.
For a given rope, less weight means less force, but not proportionally less, so a lighter person will experiance a faster deceleration (more G's).
Used to work construction, guys used worse than a static rope. Was an old woven rope, nothing close to modern. They were 4 floors up, and I was just like, yeah guys, you're DEFINITLY safe.....