Operational Safety of Steel-Cord Conveyor Belts Under Non-stationary Loadings

To ensure the safe work of a conveyor high values of a conveyor belt safety factor (BSF) are applied for obtaining peak tensions and belt strength. The BSF of steel-cord conveyor belts is derived from the splice dynamics fatigue strength (as identified by the laboratory tests that were made almost half a century ago), as well as degradation from age, factory and field installation error factors and non-steady momentary factors. The users’ experience suggests that the steel-cord belt tensile strength is overestimated, especially for the long, high capacity conveyors. The authors propose the use of the recently implemented complex methods of steel-cord belts in situ condition monitoring methods for identification of the actual belt tensile strength and the accurate methods of calculation of a conveyor’s resistances to motion and belt tension in order to identify and monitor the operational belt safety factor (OBSF) for steel-cord belts.