Mechanical Properties of the Materials Making up the Conveyor Belt Structure

Institute of Machine Construction, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Poznan University of Technology, Poland

Abstract

Belt conveyors, equipped with belts designed for transporting materials and finished products are used in many industries. They allow to transport delicate items, for example made of glass, heavy products, such as canned food products and lightweight items, such as cardboard boxes. For this reason, the conveyor belts must, besides transferring power, ensure adequate conditions of transport for the conveyed materials without compromising the service life of the belt. Homogenous belts may not be capable of meeting all these requirements at a time. Composite belts, composed of the load-bearing layers and covering materials adhered thereon with the purpose to modify the surface properties, can be an option of choice in such cases. The described experiments were carried out on the respective materials making up composite belt joints as part of the research efforts related to the PhD thesis on adhesive bonding of composite belting materials. The strength tests were carried out on dumbbell-shaped specimens that were prepared from the load-carrying layer of synchronous polyurethane belting, the facing materials, namely polyamide fabric and polyurethane foam and the polyurethane adhesive used to join these layers. The differences in the parameters describing the surface properties, i.e. hardness and roughness were also checked. The experimental results were used to determine the material and strength properties of the components and the resulting differences were analysed.