Hydraulic Disc Brakes with Intelligent Brake Controllers for Belt Conveyor Drives

摘要

Brake units on belt conveyor drives come in many shapes and sizes, depending on the design engineer. Anything from basic on/off control over multi-level control to proportional control has been tried. Svendborg Brakes A/S launched its revolutionary microprocessor based intelligent brake control called the Soft Braking Option approx. 6 years ago. The Soft Braking Option control principle started as a simple programmable deceleration control unit with a very simple user interface, which was soon updated to an intelligent brake controller system with more user-friendly interfaces and with more features. The updated Soft Braking Option control principle has, amongst many others, been used by Man Takraf on the Henderson 2000 (USA) installation and by Flender on Escondida Phase 4 and Escondida None (Chile). This chapter describes some of the intelligent brake control systems used over the last four years, with focus on belt conveyor brake systems. A hydraulic disc brake is no longer just a disc brake. Being able to manipulate the hydraulics is a very large part of the challenge when stopping a conveyor belt.