The Experimental Study on Mechanical Behavior of Conveyor Belt Rubber Bearings

Abstract

<jats:p>Fabric core conveyor belt rubber bearing (CBRB) with low cost and a simple manufacturing process has been proposed to further popularize seismic isolation technology in low-rise buildings, and four samples of such bearings have been produced, including four-layer, five-layer, five-layer with inner pattern and six-layer fabric core CBRBs. The vertical compression and the compression shear test are carried out to evaluate the performances of the four bearings. Results show that the vertical stiffness of the CBRB increases as the number of fabric core layer increases, while the damping ratio decreases, and the bearings can withstand a vertical pressure of 10 MPa. In addition, these bearings work very well within 100% shear strain, and the horizontal stiffness of the bearings decreases with increasing shear strain. In the meantime, as the number of fabric core layer increases, the effective horizontal stiffness of the bearings increases under 4 MPa compressive stress, and the damping ratio coefficient of the bearing is about 15%, when bearing sliding does not occur. The ultimate shear strain reached up to 200% for the four-layer bearing with obvious interlayer cracks, which means that the bonding quality between layers is the key influencing factor on the ultimate shear strain. In short, the proposed low-cost bearing has low horizontal stiffness and good energy dissipation capacity, so it is suitable for low-rise buildings in economically underdeveloped, high intensity areas, which can significantly improve their earthquake resistance and reduce casualties and property losses.</jats:p>

An experimental study on mechanical behavior of nylon fabric laminated rubber bearings

“…The energy dissipation capacity is likely to result from nylon fabric. The characteristics of the high horizontal damping ratio are also found in the literature (Wu et al, 2020; Van Engelen et al, 2016). (4) The peak value of the hysteresis curve of B1 drops obviously when the shear strain reaches 300%, which indicates that the bearing has been damaged to a certain extent.…”

“…The energy dissipation capacity is likely to result from nylon fabric. The characteristics of the high horizontal damping ratio are also found in the literature (Wu et al, 2020; Van Engelen et al, 2016).…”

“…In addition, previous studies paid less attention to the vertical compression characteristics of the bearings. Considering that there are few in-depth studies on nylon bearings in previous studies, a new type of low-cost and light-weight nylon fabric laminated rubber bearing (NFRB) was designed and manufactured on the basis of literature (Wu et al, 2020), and the steel reinforcing plates in the laminated steel rubber bearing were replaced with the nylon dipped fabric cloth. Different from fiber reinforced rubber bearings in the above researches, the total height of the NFRBs is much lower.…”

“…Ashkezari et al (2008) studied the steel like fiber reinforced elastomeric seismic isolators by experiment; Hedayati Dezfuli and Alam (2014, 2016) used industrial glue to realize the cold bonding between carbon fiber cloth and rubber sheet; Karimzadeh Naghshineh et al (2014, 2015) studied the mechanical properties of a new type of fiber-mesh-reinforced seismic isolators; Spizzuoco et al (2014) and Losanno et al (2019b, 2020a) introduced the application of recycled rubber in fiber reinforced rubber bearings; Losanno et al (2019a, 2020b) studied mechanical properties of innovative polyester fiber reinforced elastomeric isolators; Tan et al [26] used the unsaturated polyester fiber reinforcement engineering plastic sheet that has a much larger out-of-plane stiffness than the general fiber-reinforced layer as the reinforcement layer, which further resulted in the ultimate shear deformation of the bearing reaching 300%. Wu et al (2020) found that the internal structure of the industrial fabric core conveyor belt is similar to that of the fiber reinforced rubber bearing, so they combined multiple layers of conveyor belt plates by cold bonding to form the bearings with much lower cost and simpler manufacturing process. Results show that the vertical stiffness of this type of bearings is small, the vertical equivalent damping ratio reaches 8%, the horizontal equivalent damping ratio is close to 15%.…”

Development of an Active Training Method for Belt Conveyor

“…Their numerous advantages were emphasized, such as high reliability [ 4 , 5 , 6 ] and the ease of adapting the conveyor belt’s route to a terrain with rich topography [ 7 , 8 , 9 ]. Another group of advantages includes, among others, continuity of transport, simple structure and relatively low energy consumption [ 10 , 11 , 12 ]. For the conveyor belt to work properly, adequately trained people are needed.…”