“Engineering Tribology” is a practical and innovative course designed for mechanical engineering students, aimed at combining theoretical knowledge with engineering practice to enhance students’ innovative and practical skills. Traditional tribology test platforms tend to focus primarily on theory, lacking resemblance to actual working conditions in terms of structure, environment, and movement of friction pairs.

To support the needs of “Engineering Tribology” teaching, this paper develops a teaching platform specifically for testing the tribological performance of steel wire ropes, inspired by research on their tribological issues. The experimental platform can simulate the internal multi-wire spiral friction contact structure of steel wire ropes, enabling fretting friction and wear performance tests on spiral contact 7/19 wire in steel wire rope under multiple working conditions and parameters, such as contact and structural parameters. The development of the platform mainly includes structural design, hardware implementation, and the design of measurement and control software. Structural design involves creating a multi-wire spiral twisting structure, a fretting structure for the rope core steel wire, a lateral loading structure, and an outer steel wire pneumatic loading structure. Hardware implementation focuses on the sensor layout and circuit hardware selection. The measurement and control software design includes an acquisition program based on LabVIEW and a control system designed for a touch screen.

The experimental platform can simulate the multi-wire spiral friction contact structure within a wire rope, providing a convenient experimental operation interface for conducting various experimental tasks. It facilitates fretting friction and wear performance tests on 7/19 wire internal spiral contact wire ropes under diverse working conditions and parameters, including contact, structural, and environmental factors. A LabVIEW software testing system allows for high-speed acquisition, storage, processing, and graphical display. The platform enables analysis of tribological properties such as friction coefficient, hysteresis characteristics, fretting wear characteristics, wear mechanisms, and wear parameters using advanced data analysis technology and experimental equipment. Students gain practical and innovative skills in engineering tribology through this platform.

The experimental platform is closely combined with actual working conditions, offering a robust engineering application background, rich operational space, a comprehensive selection of experimental design schemes, and a complete tribological performance experimental process. It significantly enhances students’ innovative, practical skills and mastery of experimental knowledge in “engineering tribology.” Deploying the experimental platform for testing the tribological properties of wire rope in an engineering tribology course enriches its practical relevance, supporting the cultivation of students’ engineering practice and innovation skills. It plays a crucial role in the development of “new engineering” and the “excellence program 2.0.”