Abstract. Roller chain and sprockets are an important component of the drive system in production lines of any industries. Many problems which concerned for damage of roller chain and sprockets would break down the producing process. To understand every failure behavior might be used a long time of experience in production lines. Furthermore, some phenomena of failure cases for roller chain and sprockets were unpredictable by an analytic method. This research aimed to propose installed cases of the roller chain and sprocket by the modeling technique. The new method for simulation of drive system was employed to analyze roller chain and a sprocket. The finite element method was used to simulate the behavior of parts that might be damaged by integrating with the multi-body system of rigid parts in the driving system. The integrating simulation would explain any installed cases of roller chain and a sprocket distinctively. Particularly, simulation results in many forms the roller chain which wrapped a sprocket would be good examples for an engineering study and design of drive system in a further work.

Abstract. The conveyor chain drive system which included four sprockets, four flat bars (chain guides) and one conveyor chain had been assembled into commercial software, MSC.ADAMS. The conveyor chain was connected with rollers for running on the chain guides. The multi-body dynamics (MBD) simulation was implemented to study the large displacement of chain components which happened during rotations of the symmetric model of the conveyor chain drive system. The physical experiment had obtained by construction of the conveyor chain drive system regarding the MBD model. The speeds of chain drive were adjusted by a gear motor with a converter. The trajectory of conveyor chain links which respectively meshed and ran on sprockets and chain guides was recorded by a high speed camera. Furthermore, impact-contact forces by a collision of components in the conveyor chain drive system during rotation were analysis. The comparison between MBD simulation and physical experiment of the conveyor chain drive system was performed for validation of simulation models. The MBD simulation results were in good agreement with the experimental data which obtained an average error of 3.95%.

Abstract. Finite element method (FEM) was employed to analyze the roller chain drive system which complicated to determine various design factors. The multi-flexible body dynamics (MFBD) method was proposed to model and analysis the roller chain drive system. The roller chain which composed of plates, pins and rollers was meshed with solid elements under the convergence test. The eight tooth sprocket was modeled by rigid body to roll and contact with the roller chain. The dynamic load distribution of the roller chain on the rigid sprocket was compared with the analytical solution. The MFBD simulation results had a good agreement with analytic results which obtained an average error of 12.32%.