Design aspects of pipe belt conveyors

This dissertation investigates how to design a pipe belt conveyor system in a more effective way, considering two aspects: to ensure conveyor belt has sufficient bending stiffness to form an enclosed pipe shape without a contact loss with the idler rolls; and to reduce energy consumption of the system from the indentation rolling resistance.
A conveyor belt bending stiffness is quantified from the toughability test. To detect an appearance of a contact loss with the idler rolls, contact forces are determined using three approaches: experimental testing; a newly introduced analytical approach, constructed based on the Displacement Method of Superposition with Maxwell-Mohr Integrals, and using FEM analysis. To determine the indentation rolling resistance, a 3D Maxwell model is used with multiple Maxwell parameters and Winkler foundation.