Predictive Maintenance
A wheel 10% smaller costs about 40% of the tape. And a tape fails mid-shed, at speed.
— million
Bend cycles the tape will survive at this strain
Bending is the only mechanism modelled, and a tape also carries tensile load, acceleration and impact at the gripper transfer — a tape that is fine on bending can still fail from a damaged edge, a misaligned guide or debris in the rapier channel, and none of that is predictable from geometry. The exponent and reference life must come from the tape supplier for the specific product; carbon and aramid tapes behave differently and the constants are not interchangeable. Treat the result as a **scheduled replacement interval with margin**, and inspect edges and gripper attachment at every loom stop rather than waiting for the count.
Rapier Tape & Gripper Head Fatigue Cycle Counter — free, with the formula and a worked example, at Textile School.