ISO 4309:2017 establishes general principles for the care and maintenance, and inspection and discard of steel wire ropes used on cranes and hoists.

In addition to guidance on storage, handling, installation and maintenance, this document provides discard criteria for those running ropes which are subjected to multi-layer spooling, where both field experience and testing demonstrate that deterioration is significantly greater at the crossover zones on the drum than at any other section of rope in the system.

It also provides more realistic discard criteria covering decreases in rope diameter and corrosion, and gives a method for assessing the combined effect of deterioration at any position in the rope.

ISO 4309:2017 is applicable to those ropes used on the following types of cranes, the majority of which are defined in ISO 4306‑1:

a) cable and portal cable cranes;

b) cantilever cranes (pillar jib, wall or walking);

c) deck cranes;

d) derrick and guy derrick cranes;

e) derrick cranes with rigid bracing;

f) floating cranes;

g) mobile cranes;

h) overhead travelling cranes;

i) portal or semi-portal bridge cranes;

j) portal or semi-portal cranes;

k) railway cranes;

l) tower cranes;

m) offshore cranes, i.e. cranes mounted on a fixed structure supported by the sea bed or on a floating unit supported by buoyancy forces.

ISO 4309:2017 applies to rope on cranes, winches and hoists used for hook, grabbing, magnet, ladle, excavator or stacking duties, whether operated manually, electrically or hydraulically.

It also applies to rope used on hoists and hoist blocks.

NOTE In view of the fact that the exclusive use of synthetic sheaves or metal sheaves incorporating synthetic linings is not recommended when single-layer spooling at the drum, due to the inevitability of wire breaks occurring internally in large numbers before there is any visible evidence of any wire breaks or signs of substantial wear on the periphery of the rope, no discard criteria are given for this combination.