You could start here

http://www.ckit.co.za/secure/conveyo...convuniq.html

But pipe conveyors are commercially produced machines so expect that a lot of producers will consider their design information commercially confidential to their own company. ■

Dear all,

I currently study on bending radius of the belt on the horizontal plane bending and calculation formulas are involved. I'm trying to find the formula used in the design of a curved conveyor system horizontally.

Kindly Help.

Thanks very much!

nph, VN ■

To save you some time in this effort, I can say, based on CDI development, the answer to the question - will take years of your time to invest in the following:

1. Understanding rubber rheology and the physics of viscoelastic mechanics at a Ph.D. level and with the necessary laboratory testing techniques/facilities.

2. Understand the combination of orthotropic properties when combining fabric stiffening layers to provide the necessary forming compliance as the layers are placed above and below the steel cord tensile member or of various fabric tensile layers in non-symmetric fashion. From these constructions, you must understand the non-linear elastic behavior of the top & bottom belt cover to bending resistance - best to measure them and develop a pseudo-equivalence model.

3. Compliance (coupled tensile elasticity and torsional response) of steel cords to tensile forces

4. Determine the change in composite resistance and rheology as the belt is deformed repeatedly as it cycles from loading to discharge state. The polymers will change their behavior with repeated deformations, with temperature changes, with belt routing complexity, with type of material in pipe, et al.

5. Have means to measure the rubber, fabric and steel cord properties to apply to an mathematical constitutive energy model that includes the above.

6. Be able to determine the bending stiffness of the pipe form as an orthotropic-diabatic material process.

7. Based on points 1-6. above, you need to determine the pressure distribution under and adjacent to each and every steel cord across the belt influenced by product loading, belt forming forces (transverse stiffnes), horizontal and vertical pressures, and belt bending forces. Based on these pressures, fabric bending resistance and allied pressure distribution, the viscoelastic energy loss can be defined depending on the belt speed, idler roll diameter, idler spacing, belt overlap dimension, belt collapsed form in curves, and prior belt tensions leading to the point of interest.

As a side note, we developed a 9 PDE composite model in ANSYS about 19 years ago. The model took 1 year to build and validate. It also would take about one year to solve one complex belt. A year later the model was reduced in form to 6 PDE's and we were able to solve a complex pipe conveyor like Barber's Point 2 km pipe in Hawaii, in about 15 minutes in a new constitutive iterative model. Now today, we have advanced our techniques to solve such complexities in a few minutes, including the patented CONFINE (tm) Goodyear (Veyance Technologies) configuration.

I applaud your enthusiasm. However, to obtain meaningful methods and validate them, may lead to disappointment if you do not thoroughly understand the nature of the problem and you are willing to invest in such a life time search and reward.

CDI has about 6-7 man-years of advance post PhD study into the CDI model , exclusive on rubber Master Curve construction and constitutive modeling. ■