METHOD FOR DETECTING LONGITUDINAL TEAR IN A CONVEYOR BELT

摘要

- 18 -Abstract of the DisclosureThis disclosure relates to a method and apparatus forautomatically detecting any longitudinal tear that is generatedin a conveyor belt during its operation, utilizing detectableelements embedded at a plurality of points of the conveyorbelt. An externally installed sensor and a control unit arealso provided. At each of the aforementioned points of embed-ment in the belt, a set of at least two of the detectable ele-ments is embedded, and the control unit is arranged (a) toreceive and process signals from the sensor, the signals havinga varied intensity corresponding to the number of detectableelements in a given embedment point, (b) to average the intens-ities of a plurality of the signals for the given embedmentpoint, and (c) to judge, on the basis of the average obtainedin (b), the presence or absence of breakage of detectableelement or elements at the given embedment point. The above-mentioned arrangement is able to judge whether one of the twodetectable elements is broken, and the judgment is not affectedby variation of the distance between detectable elements andthe sensor. If breakage of a single detectable element of anyset is identified, the affected element may be repaired duringan outage of the conveyor. In this way, breakage of two ele-ments of a point without any longitudinal tear will beeliminated.