HTS Conductor on Round Core (CORC®) cabling concept allows cables to be manufactured with round formers as small as two to five millimeters in diameter. CORC® consist of several layers of helical tapes wound around a central metallic core in an alternating fashion. Various parameters like winding angle, tape width, substrate thickness, number of layers, and lubrication, significantly influence the CORC® cables and wires' performance. A set of bending experiments is conducted on single-layer CORC® cables and wires with different cabling parameters to check the flexibility and determine the critical bending radius. The current conduction through the CORC®'s core is also studied by insulating the core. Results are analyzed and compared with the help of a detailed finite element (FE) model. The FE modeling consists of three steps – tape production process, tape winding, and bending of CORC® cables or wires. The local potential distributions on a scale smaller than the width of the superconductor tape are tested experimentally. An electrical network model is created to study the effects of degraded spots in the tape and visualize the strained tape's current flow. The experiment consists of measurements at local spots on the REBCO tape with a specially designed multipoint probe, which are then compared with the full length CORC® performance. The inter-tape contact resistance of simplified CORC® wires is also investigated at 77 K. The influence of lubrication, multiple cooldown cycles, and the bending diameter were investigated. In addition, an electrical resistance network model is also build to predict the contact resistance distribution along the wire when the bending load is applied.