Intelligent Belt Conveyor Monitoring and Control

Belt conveyors have been used worldwide in continuous material transport for about 250 years. Traditional inspection and monitoring of large-scale belt conveyors focus on individual critical components and response to catastrophic system failures. To prevent operational problems caused by the lack of experience of maintenance personnel, the monitoring and operational control of belt conveyors can be automated. This research presents the possibilities to improve belt conveyor performance by means of integrating the information derived from traditional individual monitoring systems to automate and optimize the process of maintenance and operational control decision-making, based on the overall status of belt conveyors. This research concerns the areas of belt conveyor monitoring and artificial intelligence. Besides an embedded conductive detection system that has been developed as a novel belt conveyor monitoring technology, the outputs of this research project demonstrate the effectiveness of an intelligent monitoring and control system. The developed intelligent system is able to automatically acquire data from belt conveyor components, identify system abnormalities and discover potential causes, assess system health condition and operational status, store and retrieve experience and knowledge to optimize maintenance and operational control strategies.Marine & Transport TechnologyMechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineerin

Smart Idlers: RFID in conveyor belt monitoring

Radio Frequency Identifi cation (RFID) is a technology that offers unique identifi cation of objects and processes. It can actively or passively communicate and, in combination with sensors, it can capture more detailed physical information. RFID technology has been integrated into our daily life.Marine and Transport TechnologyMechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineerin

Planetary gear fault diagnosis via feature image extraction based on multi central frequencies and vibration signal frequency spectrum

Poor working environment leads to frequent failures of planetary gear trains. However, complex structure and variable transmission make the vibration signal strongly non-linear and non-stationary, which brings big problems to fault diagnosis. A method of planetary gear fault diagnosis via feature image extraction based on multi central frequencies and vibration signal frequency spectrum is proposed. The original vibration signal is decomposed by variational mode decomposition (VMD), and four components with narrow bands and independent central frequencies are decomposed. In order to retain the feature spectrum of the original vibration signal as far as possible, the corresponding feature bands are intercepted from the frequency spectrum of original vibration signal based on the central frequency of each component. Then, the feature images of fault signals are constructed as the inputs of the convolution neural network (CNN), and the parameters of the neural network are optimized by sample training. Finally, the optimized CNN is used to identify fault signals. The overall fault recognition rate is up to 98.75%. Compared with the feature bands extracted directly from the component spectrums, the extraction method of the feature bands proposed in this paper needs fewer iterations under the same network structure. The method of planetary gear fault diagnosis proposed in this paper is effective.Transport Engineering and Logistic

Explicit dynamic modeling with joint friction and coupling analysis of a 5-DOF hybrid polishing robot

Aiming at a 5-DOF hybrid optical mirror polishing robot, the explicit dynamic model considering the joint friction is established and the inertia coupling distribution is studied. Firstly, the kinematics of the manipulator is solved based on closed-loop vector method, and the dynamic model is established with Newton-Euler method based on the force analysis of manipulator components. Secondly, the kinematic parameters of the reference point of the moving platform are selected as the intermediate variables, and the explicit dynamic model of the parallel manipulator is obtained by parameters substitution considering the friction effects of spherical joints, universal joints and ball screws. Finally, on the basis of the dynamic model, the inertia coupling strength evaluation index for active branched-chains is proposed, and the distribution law of the coupling strength in a certain trajectory and workspace is studied. The results show that the inertia coupling strength indices between active branched-chains vary with the manipulator position and are symmetrically distributed in the workspace. This paper provides a theoretical basis for the joint controller design and structural parameter optimization of the polishing robot.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Transport Engineering and Logistic

Kalman Filter Preview Control for Energy Savings of Large Scale Cascaded Belt Conveying Systems

In various industry productions belt conveyors are widely used for continuous dry bulk material transport. A large scale belt conveying system is generally composed of cascaded single conveyors consuming considerable electric power. According to DIN22101 regulating the belt speed and thereby maximizing the load on the belt may lead to a certain reduction of the needed electrical drive power. To avoid the operational risks, which may be caused by the dynamics of the system, preview control strategy has been proposed for belt conveyor speed control. In case the loading scenarios of a primary conveyor can be measured, the material feeding rate to following conveyors can be previewed. To reduce the influence of noises during material flow measurement and control synchronization, this paper presents the research of adopting Kalman filter to preview control to improve the transient operations of controlled belt conveyors as well as the energy efficiency of the system. Compared to two speed control strategies, the non-constraint preview control and the fuzzy speed control, experimental results show that the proposed Kalman filter based preview control reduces the noise interferences towards softer and safer speed regulation process.Accepted Author ManuscriptTransport Engineering and Logistic

Green operations of belt conveyors by means of speed control

Belt conveyors can be partially loaded due to the variation of bulk material flow loaded onto the conveyor. Speed control attempts to reduce the belt conveyor energy consumption and to enable the green operations of belt conveyors. Current research of speed control rarely takes the conveyor dynamics into account so that speed control lacks applicability. Based on our previous research, this paper will provide an improved three-step method to determine the minimum speed adjustment time. This method can be summarized as Estimation-Calculation-Optimization and ECO in short. The ECO method takes both the potential risks and the conveyor dynamics into account. It is expected to keep belt conveyors in good dynamic behaviors in transient operations. After discussing the ECO method, this research takes a long inclined belt conveyor of an import dry bulk terminal as case study. Based on the suggested acceleration time, a speed controller is built and computational simulations are carried out to evaluate the energy savings and the conveyor dynamics. Experimental results prove that the application of the ECO method ensures the healthy dynamic performance of belt conveyors under speed control in transient operations. Annually, the average electricity consumption of the single conveyor can be reduced by over 10% with around 90 tons reduction of emission. The direct economic benefit can reach up to more than €10,000 in terms of the electricity utilization per year.Accepted Author ManuscriptTransport Engineering and Logistic

Experimental validation of multi-sensor data fusion model for railway wheel defect identification

Wheel defects are detrimental for railway train and track components and should be detected and identified as early as possible. Wheel Impact Load Detector (WILD) is a commercial condition monitoring system used for detecting the defective wheels. This system usually measures the rail strain at different points by multiple sensors. WILD converts the measured strains to the force and uses the peak force, dynamic force, and ratio of the peak force to the static force to estimate the condition of the in-service wheels. These methods are useful for detecting the severe defects contributing to the contact force to the extent that exceed a predetermined threshold. Therefore, in the prior research a fusion method has been developed to reconstruct a new informative pattern from the data collected by the multiple sensors. The reconstructed pattern provides a comprehensive description of the wheel condition. This paper validates the fusion method using a set of lab tests to investigate the applicability of the proposed method. For this purpose, a test rig has been built consisting of a circular rail, a rotating arm, and a wheel. Six strain sensors have been installed under the rail in the symmetric locations over the rail circle with 60 degree intervals. The fusion method used to reconstruct a signal from the bending strain signals measured by the multiple sensors. Different wheel defects including the flat and out-of-round wheels have been tested and the results validated the fusion method by providing informative patterns.Transport Engineering and Logistic

Dynamic Analysis and Trajectory Tracking Control for a Parallel Manipulator with Joint Friction

To overcome the bearing capacity deficiencies of traditional serial hip joint simulators, complex trajectory simulation, among others, as well as a parallel manipulator with two pairs of artificial hip joints and two moving platforms are proposed. The movements and driving forces of the parallel manipulator under the required motion and loading are studied to provide a basis for further research. In this study, the modeling and analysis of inverse kinematics and dynamics for a parallel manipulator with joint friction are derived. In the inverse kinematic model, kinematic relationships between the linear module slider and the moving platform are established, and expressions for the slider are deduced. Subsequently, by analyzing the frictional forces of the artificial hip joint and thrust ball bearing, a rigid body dynamics model of the parallel manipulator with joint friction is established, which is subsequently decomposed into four driving torques associated with the moving platform, joint lever, slider, and screw. Finally, the difference in the kinematic performance between the two moving platforms is analyzed using numerical simulations and experiments, and the accuracy of the established model is verifiedTransport Engineering and Logistic

Belt conveyor dynamics in transient operation for speed control

Belt conveyors play an important role in continuous dry bulk material transport, especially at the mining industry. Speed control is expected to reduce the energy consumption of belt conveyors. Transient operation is the operation of increasing or decreasing conveyor speed for speed control. According to literature review, current research rarely takes the conveyor dynamics in transient operation into account. However, in belt conveyor speed control, the conveyor dynamic behaviors are significantly important since the poor dynamics might result in risks. In this paper, the potential risks in transient operation will be analyzed. An existing finite element model will be applied to build a conveyor model, and simulations will be carried out to analyze the conveyor dynamics. In order to realize the soft speed regulation, Harrison’s sinusoid acceleration profile will be applied, and Lodewijks estimator will be built to approximate the required acceleration time. A long inclined belt conveyor will be studied with two major simulations. The conveyor dynamics will be given.Transport Engineering and Logistic

Integrated Stiffness Analysis of Redundant Parallel Manipulator Based on Finite Element Method

An integrated stiffness model is established for a Planar Parallel Manipulator (PPM) with actuation redundancy based on Finite Element Method (FEM), and the static stiffness, dynamitic stiffness and moving stiffness of the PPM are analyzed according to the integrated stiffness model. Firstly, a dynamic model of flexible plane beam element is created as a basic unit for branches. Secondly, each branch is assembled in generalized coordinates, and the integrated stiffness model of the PPM is established. Then calculation and simulation for the static stiffness, dynamitic stiffness and moving stiffness are carried out. The results show that the static stiffness and dynamitic stiffness are related with the position and posture of the PPM. The moving stiffness shows that the elastic deformations cause the oscillation of the PPM. In this paper, three stiffness models are unified in the integrated stiffness model, which improves the efficiency of the stiffness calculation and mechanism design.Marine and Transport TechnologyMechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineerin