An Investigation into Tensile Forces of Long Distance Belt Conveyor

Abstract

The focus of this thesis is to find belt tension at different locations for long distance belt conveyor under steady state operation. An overland conveyor is basically a long belt conveyor but may follow a complex conveying path, which may include horizontal and vertical curves. Belt tensions at different points are not needed in case of a small in-plant belt conveyor but in case of overland conveyors due to the addition of the horizontal and vertical curves, tensions at these curves are needed for design purposes. Further, for a small belt conveyor maximum tension (which is the main criteria for design purposes) mostly occurs at the drive pulley but for overland conveyor it may occur at some other location because of possibilities of multiple inclines and declines in the conveying path. So methods for calculating belt tension of small belt conveyor may not be application to long and complex overland conveyor. In this thesis a new computer program has been generated (using CEMA universal method) that can calculate the belt tension at different locations for an overland conveyor with horizontal and vertical curves. The program was tested with five conveyors of different length and difference in the maximum tension was within ± 12% of original industrial data.