Abstract
Conveyor belt transfer is a widely used transportation means in industry and agriculture, with the help of the robot arms the workpiece on the belt can be picked and placed, replacing human ...sorters for production lines work. The position and orientation of the workpiece are important for grabbing by the robot arms. The goal of the paper was to investigate the acquisition of the position and orientation of the conveyor belt workpiece by means of the camera video overhead looking down the belt. The proposed method is the inter frame difference in nature, using the conveyor belt background as the first frame, but the other frames were not used wholly as usually, only an ROI all around the conveyor belt in the camera video was chosen, and the inter frame difference was carried out in the ROI. The ROI was of the same width as that of the belt in the video which was known in advance, while the length of the ROI was arbitrary, so one pixel in the frame was scaled to the actual length conveniently. Every read frame behind the background was computed the difference with the background in such ROI, and the four vertexes coordinates of the rectangle workpiece image on the belt were obtained when it passed the ROI, and then the distance apart from the right belt boundary was calculated due to the proportional relation between the width of workpiece and that of the ROI. Two kind workpiece orientation on the belt toward the left and right were judged using the same obtained four vertexes coordinates by means of Euclidian length, and the tilt angle was calculated by arc tangent function in favour of two narrow sides of rectangle workpiece grab. The actual test showed that the method of obtaining the position and orientation of workpiece on the belt proposed in the paper could be realized correctly.
•The combustion characteristics of coal mine conveyor belt were studied.•The gas phase products of conveyor belt combustion were examined in phases.•The products of three phases of conveyor belt ...combustion were thoroughly investigated.•The fire risk posed by conveyor belt burning is investigated.
This study aimed to use the thermogravimetric infrared coupling (TG-FTIR) and cone calorimeter coupling techniques to analyse the Pyrolysis characteristics and fire hazard of conveyor belt during heating process based on different stages of the combustion process. The results demonstrate that the conveyor belt is melted and volatilized by heat in the first stage (200∼350 °C), and a cross-linking polymerization process ensues, with the primary gas-phase products being chlorine-containing compounds, aromatic acid esters, and HCl. In the second stage (350∼600 °C), the conveyor belt started to burn fiercely, redox reactions occurred, the primary gas-phase products added to hydrocarbons, Benzoic acids, aldehydes, amides, and a significant number of CO2, CO, H2O(g). The third stage (600∼700 °C) corresponds to the recession phase of combustion, when the concentration of most gas phase products decreases and the production of amides and ketones increases. As the intensity of thermal radiation increases, the mass loss, heat release rate, fire hazard, CO/CO2 generation rate and smoke also increase.
This book focuses on research related to the energy efficiency of conveyor transportation. The solutions presented in the Special Issue have an impact on optimizing, and thus reducing, the costs of ...energy consumption by belt conveyors. This is due, inter alia, to the use of better materials for conveyor belts, which reduce its rolling resistance and noise, and improve its ability to adsorb the impact energy from the material falling on the belt. The use of mobile robots designed to detect defects in the conveyor's components makes the conveyor operation safer, and means that the conveyor works for longer and there are no unplanned stops due to damage.
The stone processing and sorting installations are installations with the help of which different geometric dimensions of the processed materials are obtained. Until the final dimensions are ...obtained, the materials go through different stages of processing. The transfer of material, within the processing and sorting installation, is done with the help of conveyor belts. Depending on the dimensions needed to be processed, different technological routes are established so as to obtain the highest possible productivity of the process.
Cyclones impacting the densely populated Mediterranean region have been a continuous research focus, mainly for investigating either the associated heavy precipitation or the damaging wind gusts. In ...this study we examine five Mediterranean cyclones with combined large‐scale impact of strong 10 m gusts and heavy precipitation. The selected events occurred in (i) December 2003 in the northeastern Mediterranean; (ii) October 2007 in the central Mediterranean; (iii) January 2009, known as storm ‘Klaus’, in the western Mediterranean; (iv) December 2010 in the eastern Mediterranean; and (v) October 2011 in the central‐northern Mediterranean. European Centre for Medium‐range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) reanalyses and 7 km resolution regional model simulations (COSMO) are analysed for each event. A Lagrangian viewpoint is employed to focus on interacting mechanisms that contribute to the joint impact on different spatial and temporal scales. In all cases, widespread strong wind gusts occur in the southwestern parts of the cyclone, while the precipitation field has localized peaks, with variable distribution in the central, southern, eastern and northern parts of the cyclone. Convective precipitation, significant in the cases in 2007, 2010 and 2011, is limited to the southern areas. In all cases, non‐convective precipitation is associated with ascent in a warm conveyor belt. Intense gusts are found within unstable air, below a low tropopause in a region with strong vertical wind shear, favouring downward momentum flux by turbulent mixing. Strongly descending dry intrusions are located coherently to the south and west of strong gusts. Much variability exists with regard to the emergence of convection, where strong winds and convective precipitation co‐occur: In the 2007 case, the dry intrusion is central in producing shallow convection in the cold frontal region. In the 2010 and 2011 cases, convective activity at high topography and in coastal regions leads to co‐location of both types of impact.
This paper presents a laboratory device simulating a section of a conveyor belt on which a diagonal plough is installed. Experimental measurements were carried out in a laboratory belonging to the ...Department of Machine and Industrial Design at the VSB-Technical University of Ostrava. During the measurements, a plastic storage box, representing a piece load, transported on the surface of a conveyor belt at a constant speed was brought into contact with the front surface of a diagonal conveyor belt plough. The aim of this paper is to determine the amount of resistance generated by the diagonal conveyor belt plough when it is placed at different angles of inclination β deg in relation to the longitudinal axis, based on the experimental measurements performed using a laboratory measuring device. Based on the measured values of tensile force required to keep the conveyor belt moving at a constant speed, the resistance to the conveyor belt movement is expressed, with a value of 20.8 ± 0.3 N being attained. Based on the ratio of the measured value of the arithmetic average of the resistance force and the weight of the used length of the conveyor belt, a mean value of the specific movement resistance of the size 0.33 N·N - 1 is calculated. This paper presents the time records obtained by measuring the tensile forces, on the basis of which it is possible to determine the magnitude of the force. The resistance during the ploughing operation of the diagonal plough when acting on a piece load placed on the working surface of the conveyor belt is presented. From the measured values of tensile forces presented in the tables, this paper reports the calculated values of the friction coefficient obtained during the movement of the diagonal plough when moving a piece of load with the defined weight from the working surface of the relevant conveyor belt. The maximum value of the arithmetic mean for the friction coefficient in motion µ = 0.86 was measured at an inclination angle of the diagonal plough of β = 30 deg.
Powerful conveyors are equipped with rubber conveyor belts. They are used in various industries. Tapes are destroyed during operation. One of the forms of destruction is a longitudinal cut of the ...tape. The purpose of the article is to build an analytical algorithm for determining and studying the stress-strain state of a rubber cable belt with a longitudinal, limited-length cut, taking into account the construction of the belt, the mechanical properties of its components (cables and rubber layers), arbitrary longitudinal violation of its integrity and the arbitrary nature of the interaction of the belt with a drum The algorithm was developed on the basis of the formulation and solution of the model of the interaction of the tape cables. An arbitrarily located partial longitudinal section of any length is taken into account. The arbitrary nature of the interaction of the belt with the conveyor drum is taken into account. It was established that the cut of the tape affects its stress-strain state both in the area with damage and beyond, in particular, it reduces the localization zones of disturbances in the strips against the size of the disturbance zone in the tape. The disturbance zone decreases more in the strip with fewer cables. The total loads of the cables in the strips remain unchanged along their length. The practical significance of the developed algorithm lies in the fact that the use of the indicators of the stress-strain state of the belt with known damage determined with its help makes it possible to make reasonable technical decisions regarding the conditions of safe, temporary use of the conveyor, including the impulse loading of the material, which should be investigated in the future.
Despite numerous research works on conveyor robots, few works can be found on electropneumatic conveyor belt robots with two separated lines. The unique feature of this study is a combination of ...various systems to develop an electropneumatic robot. In this work, an automated and intelligent mechatronic conveyor system is designed and developed for transporting and positioning circular objects that can be used in the manufacturing and packaging industries. In addition to moving and positioning, timing can also be controlled on this conveyor belt robot. All control operations are handled by an electrical and programmable relay called a mini programmable logic controller (PLC), color sensor, gripper arm, and electronic switches. An electropneumatic system is used to control the robot for placing objects. The main goal of this study is to develop a novel 3D structural design which make the procedure unique for better efficiency and accuracy. The novelty of this work lies within the 3D design of two belts and assembly of all electropneumatic components which are helpful for manufacturing assembly lines. Also, TCS230 sensor and AVR microcontroller are used to identify the colors within the operation. The results show the accuracy of the developed system is reliable in terms of color and positioning detection. The system is able to work non-stop for more than 1 hour without any issues.
•Refuse-derived fuels (RDF) made from waste are co-fired in cement production plants.•Composition of RDF determines cement quality, but is unknown.•A database of individual RDF images was ...built.•Random forrest classifier and neural network tested to identify RDF fractions.•The neural network was tested in a conveyor belt setup and reached 71 % accuracy.
The current paper aims at the evaluation of computer vision methods to identify RDF (Refuse-derived fuels) fractions based on images of the RDF particles. For this purpose, images of 1345 single RDF particles, with a typical size in the cm-range, were taken in bird’s eye view and assigned manually to one of six predefined material fractions.
Two possible methods were tested for fraction identification: First, a classical machine learning approach consisting of feature extraction of color histograms and Haralick-textures as input for a random forest classifier and, second, a neural network approach with transfer learning.
In the machine learning approach, the random forest classifier with feature extraction based on image color distribution (histograms of colors in images) and Haralick-textures (matrix of gray-value co-occurrences) achieved an accuracy of 49 %. The neural network approach is based on the Xception network, a state-of-the-art convolutional neural network with depthwise separable convolutions. The accuracy of the Xception network for recognizing RDF fractions with transfer learning is 69%, thus considerably better than with the machine learning approach and a good starting point for identifying the very inhomogeneous appearance of RDF fractions.
The Xception approach was then used in a more realistic setup where the RDF particles are transported by a conveyor belt which allowed for simplified image acquisition. Here, some additional measures are needed for image recognition like edge detection performed by the Canny algorithm. The accuracy for a test data set could be increased to 71 % after using images from this setup to improve the neural network.
•A model of microwave heating process with translational motion and rotation was built.•Implicit function and level set method are used to express the elements’ motion.•Effects of samples' moving ...speeds and shape on the heating uniformity are analyzed.•This method can analyze the industrial microwave heating process with complex motion.
In practical chemical applications, in order to improve the microwave heating uniformity, moving elements, such as mode stirrers, turntables and conveyor belts, have been widely used as an easy way to implement. However, different moving elements may have different shapes, modes of motion and moving speed, which makes the simulation of the heating process very difficult. In this paper, a stepping algorithm based on implicit function and level set method is proposed to simulate the microwave heating process of multi-component with unequal moving speed. The accuracy of the algorithm is verified by discrete method and experiments. Moreover, the model was used to analyze the heating process with different components at different positions and speeds. The effect of different materials of mode stirrers and shapes of heated sample on heating process were also compared. The researches show that the proposed model can effectively improve the heating uniformity and heating efficiency.