  The present work aims at describing hysteresis behaviour arising from cyclic
bending experiments on cables by means of the Preisach operator. Pure bending
experiments conducted in previous work show that slender structures such as
electric cables behave inelastically and open hysteresis loops arise, with
noticeable difference between the first load cycle and the following ones. The
Preisach operator plays an important role in describing the input-output
relation in hysteresis behaviours and it can be expressed as a superposition of
relay operators. Here, we utilise data collected from pure bending experiments
for a first approach. We introduce a mathematical formulation of the problem,
and starting from the curvature of the cable specimen, we recursively define
the Preisach plane for this specific case. Therefore, we derive a suitable
kernel function in a way that the integration of such function over the
Preisach plane results in the bending moment of the specimen.
