Research Of Film Operational Mechanism Of Air Cushion Belt Conveyor And Its Implementation Under High Speed Heavy Load Condition

Air cushion belt conveyor replaces the traditional roller by the air cushion to support the belt to convey material. Because of its advantages such as energy saving, environmental protection, high efficiency, low friction and so on, it is widely used in mines, ports and other areas. But owing to its imperfect of the design theory and method and its unreasonable design of the local structure, the process in industrial application of air cushion belt conveyor is greatly hindered. In this paper, to satisfy the need for high speed and heavy load condition, a design and evaluation methods of air cushion belt conveyor is proposed as a supplement to its design theory. And the corresponding key-parts of the machine are optimization designed. It offers a useful theoretical and technical support for the machine’s design and application in industrialization.In this paper, it adopts the Reynolds equation instead of N-S equation to analyze the air film physical model. Through the application of the air impedance theory, the air path system of the machine is analyzed. And the characteristics of its components like the straight pipe, elbow, three links, and the air chamber are revealed by using CFX software for the simulation and the corresponding experiments. It also introduces the relationship of influence among different local resistances.To analyze the belt load attribute, the paper puts forward the concept of air film stiffness, taking the spring model as an example, as the film quality evaluation standard. Experiments are carried out to measure the air film stiffness of the testing machine and its influencing factors such as the number of the orifice, the flow velocity, the diameter, the disk groove angle and the temperature are discussed and clarified through the Ansys workbench platform. Finally, it proposed an optimal model based on experiments as the design objective. With the high speed and heavy load design background, the belt speed’s effect on the formation of the air film is explained based on the simulation results, the belt deformation under heavy load is demonstrated through the FSI one-way coupling simulation method, and the design principle of the full range air cushion conveyer is also presented.In the end, based on the simulation results and the theory above, the paper does the pipeline re-selection and comes up with the bilateral air supply scheme and the valve selection scheme. Besides, it gave the Y shaped air chamber optimization design as well as a new idea for air distributing plate design and improved the dust chamber window design before. Analysis of big-hole and small-hole orifice flow mechanism is presented, and the result suggests that the orifice’s thickness should be consistent with the small-hole mechanism.