Determination of Material Parameters for a FEA-Model of Conveyor Belt Splices
Categories |
Konferenz (reviewed) |
Year | 2012 |
Authors | Froböse, T.; Overmeyer, L.; Wakatsuki A. |
Published in | BulkSolids Europe 2012. Berlin, Germany: Nürnberg Messe, Vogel Business Media |
Belt conveyors are a proven and well established means for continuous conveying of bulk material for decades under technical and economic points of view. They usually represent the largest capital item on a conveyor system. That is why it should be laid special attention on its technical design. For long belt conveyors and large amounts of bulk material, steel cord conveyor belts represent the state of art. Conveyor systems with a total performance of 40.000 t/h and total length of 20 km have already been built. Conveyor belts are first joined to form a continuous belt on the conveying system site. This is mainly due to the fact that both the reel diameters as well as the weight of the conveyor belts are subjected to limits in respect of transportation and handling. Conveyor belts therefore consist of a number of conveyor belt sections which are bonded through vulcanization. These sections do rarely exceed 400 m. Each conveyor belt has at least one and generally a number of splices. These splices represent the weakest areas within in the conveyor belt. The different tests to determinate the strength of conveyor belt splices are very expensive and time-consuming. An easier way is to simulate the tensions in a splice to be able to make a preselection of the best splice layout.
The strength of conveyor belt splices depends on many parameters like the used materials or the splice layout. In cooperation with Fenner Dunlop America the Institute of Transport and Automation Technology works on the calculation and design of conveyor belt splices with Finite Element Method (FEM). A challenge is the determination and the verification of the needed material parameters. In addition the interaction of the different materials makes the simulation more complicated. During this project a possible way to evaluate out these parameters was found. In a first step the material parameters for the core rubber are determined and verified with simple experiments. In a next, the interaction of the different materials is examined with 7-rope specimen. The outputs of this test are the parameters for the used cover material. With those simple steps all input parameters for the simulation of a complete splice are generated. Now the best layout for the splice can be determined with a verification of different geometric parameters, for example the pitch or the cord end gap.