Abstract: Wire rope laying is an issue of large rotational ellasto-plastic deformation of three-dimensional beam.The formation stress affects the formability of wire rope,and the resultant residual stress greatly affects the structural strength.In order to assure the accuracy and efficiency in the numerical simulation of wire rope laying,and design the laying process parameters and the structural strength reasonably,a finite element method for analyzing the deformation of wire rope laying is proposed.The method takes into account the large rotational geometric non-linearity and the elasto-plastic deformation which involves co-rotational coordinate system.Based on the mentioned method,an algorithm of the laying process simulation of wire rope is developed.The results of analysis clearly indicate that self-rotating ratio greatly affects the distribution of stress and strain under the laying,the residual stress and the shape stability.The reasonable value of self-rotating ratio should be slightly more than 1.0.The geometric model and the numerical simulation method proposed in this paper are also validated by experimental data.