Analysis of Devices to Detect Longitudinal Tear on Conveyor Belts

Abstract

Currently mining enterprises more and more often use belt conveyors for mining operations. The length of transporting rock mass could be several kilometers, so in most cases conveyor are used. The transported rock mass is rather heterogeneous, as a rule, it has inclusions in a form of large pieces with sharp edges and, in some cases, metal objects, which might cause longitudinal tears of various lengths on conveyor belts. They lead to significant repair costs or replacement of expensive conveyor belt, loss of transported material, and downtime of the major enterprise equipment. In the world practice various devices and systems to detect longitudinal tears on conveyor belts have been developed for their successful operation. In this paper, there is analysis of existing devices to detect longitudinal tears on conveyor belts based on the use of mechanical (detection of the transported cargo on the lower the conveyor section and measuring the belt width), ultrasonic and electro-magnetic energy, evaluation of changes in the magnetic field configuration, computer vision, infrared laser and x-ray radiation, image recognition software and embedded transponder chips.

Belt Tear Detection for Coal Mining Conveyors

“…The leak of transported goods from the bottom of the belts often indicates the puncture damages to the conveyor belts. Hence, some sensor-based detection methods, such as LTCD, detect protrusion or leakage from the lower surface of an idle belt [ 4 ]. In general, the main idea of similar detection methods is to interpret other invalid status signals of the conveyor belt, such as belt relative width or transported material spillage or leakage, as the valid belt longitudinal tearing discriminant.…”