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Belt­Genius Conveyor Consulting: Ex­per­tise that drives belt conveyor systems for­ward.

In the min­ing in­dus­try, belt con­vey­ors are ab­so­lute­ly es­sen­tial for trans­por­ting the mined ma­te­ri­al. Ev­ery sys­tem is unique – ad­apted in­di­vi­du­al­ly to the to­po­gra­phy and di­verse pa­ra­me­ters of the spe­cif­ic site and re­quired con­vey­ing ca­pa­ci­ty. Pre­cise a­nal­y­ses and com­plex cal­cu­la­tions are there­fore ne­ces­sary to de­sign and plan new belt con­vey­or sys­tems or op­ti­mize ex­ist­ing fa­cil­i­ties. In ad­di­tion, a high de­gree of hu­man ex­per­tise and ex­pe­ri­ence is im­por­tant for the pur­pos­es of prac­ti­cal im­ple­men­ta­tion.

The ex­perts be­hind Belt­Genius Conveyor Con­sulting of­fer both – the right tools and ex­ten­sive ex­per­tise. The en­gi­neers are thor­ough­ly fa­miliar with all as­pects of ex­ist­ing and planned sys­tems and can use com­po­nents that Voith Turbo de­vel­ops and pro­duces it­self. As a re­sult, the team has de­vel­oped a pro­found un­der­stand­ing of belt con­vey­ors and has in­cor­po­rat­ed this know­ledge in­to the Turbo­Belt Drive­Con­trol con­trol sys­tem, a de­vel­op­ment by Voith Turbo. Turbo­Belt Drive­Con­trol is the core of ev­ery belt con­vey­or sys­tem and en­sures op­ti­mum op­er­a­tion. In the case of new sys­tems and re­builds of ex­ist­ing sys­tems, the de­sign of the drive­train and pro­gram­ming of the sys­tem con­trol unit are based on the ac­tu­al needs of the sys­tem. Com­pared to com­pe­ti­tors, Voith Turbo takes full re­spon­si­bility from pro­ject plan­ning of the con­veyor to com­mis­sion­ing of the drive­trains, in­clud­ing the con­trol sys­tem Turbo­Belt Drive­Con­trol. This re­duces in­ter­faces and pro­ject risk.

BeltGenius Conveyor Consulting complements the BeltGenius product family

Belt­Genius is the Voith Turbo prod­uct fam­i­ly that en­ables the mon­i­tor­ing of belt con­vey­or sys­tems and thus pro­vides the start­ing point for im­prove­ments.

BeltGenius Conveyor Consulting

BeltGenius Conveyor Consulting complements the BeltGenius product family

BeltGenius is the name of the Voith Turbo prod­uct fam­i­ly for mon­i­tor­ing con­vey­or belt sys­tems, op­ti­miz­ing per­for­mance and de­sign, and an­alyz­ing and re­solv­ing faults. This starts with sen­sors that col­lect and pro­vide da­ta on im­por­tant belt con­vey­or com­po­nents, re­gard­less of wheth­er these com­po­nents are from Voith Turbo or oth­er sup­pli­ers.

Apart from the re­li­abil­i­ty as­pect, a wide range of im­prove­ments can be achieved with Belt­Genius. Mine op­er­a­tors can rec­tify belt sys­tem prob­lems, im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy and in­crease pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Con­se­quent­ly, they can save CO2 and re­duce their costs.

With the es­tab­lished soft­ware so­lu­tion Belt­Genius ERIC, a ‘dig­i­tal twin’ for belt con­vey­or sys­tems, im­por­tant in­for­ma­tion can be ob­tained about wheth­er the sys­tem is run­ning op­ti­mally or wheth­er there is room for im­prove­ment. “We are al­so work­ing on so­lu­tions that will al­low us to pro­vide com­plete trans­paren­cy about the belt sys­tem and its main com­po­nents,” ex­plains Ste­fan Hut­zen­laub, Prod­uct Man­ag­er Belt­Genius at Voith Turbo. “In this con­text, the main ob­jec­tive is to a­void un­sched­uled down­times and make the re­place­ment of com­po­nents as pre­dict­a­ble as pos­si­ble. The re­sult is a re­duc­tion of in­ven­to­ries, long­er com­po­nent ser­vice life, and op­ti­mal, con­di­tion-based main­te­nance plan­ning. This in turn leads to con­sid­er­able sav­ings in the op­er­a­tion of belt con­vey­or sys­tems.”

Highlights of BeltGenius ERIC

BeltGenius ERIC offers mine op­er­a­tors numerous ad­van­tages, fa­cil­i­tated by the con­cur­rent dig­i­tal sim­u­la­tion of the en­tire con­vey­ing sys­tem.

  • Full trans­par­en­cy about the en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy of con­vey­ing sys­tems by means of the En­er­gy Per­for­mance In­di­ca­tor (EnPI)
  • EnPI en­ables the bench­marking of dif­fer­ent con­veyor sys­tems and iden­ti­fies im­prove­ment po­ten­tial
  • Dig­i­tal belt scale func­tion­al­i­ty
  • Vir­tu­al belt ten­sion sen­sor
  • Vir­tu­al sen­sor for sec­ond-by-sec­ond pre­dic­tion of belt slip­page
  • Trans­par­en­cy about load bal­anc­ing in the case of mul­ti-mo­tor drives

Stefan Hutzenlaub,
Product Manager BeltGenius, Voith Turbo

With our new BeltGenius Con­vey­or Con­sult­ing service, we support our cus­tomers in op­ti­mizing their belt sys­tem not just in the­ory. They can max­imize per­for­mance every sin­gle day – as ef­fi­ciently and com­po­nent-friendly as pos­sible.
Service offering supports operators of belt conveyor systems

Service of­fer­ing sup­ports op­er­a­tors of belt con­vey­or sys­tems

“With our new BeltGenius Con­vey­or Con­sult­ing service, we support our cus­tomers in op­ti­mizing their belt sys­tem not just in the­ory. They can max­imize per­for­mance every sin­gle day – as ef­fi­ciently and com­po­nent-friendly as pos­sible,” says Stefan Hutzenlaub.

Marco Dorigo, Vice Pres­i­dent Belt Con­vey­or Sys­tems at Voith Turbo, adds: “Belt con­vey­ors are com­plex ma­chines and no two are alike. The im­port­ant fac­tor when de­sign­ing and op­ti­mizing such sys­tems is the in­ter­play be­tween cal­cu­la­tion soft­ware and the ex­per­tise of the user. Our ex­perts know the lim­its of the math­e­mat­i­cal mod­els and ex­tend them by ap­ply­ing their dec­ades-long ex­pe­ri­ence. Thanks to their prac­ti­cal knowl­edge, they know ex­act­ly how to a­void ma­te­rial spil­lages, for ex­am­ple, or how belt sys­tems can cope e­ven with nar­row hor­i­zon­tal curves. They con­sid­er nu­mer­ous de­tails that are com­plete­ly un­known to the soft­ware. It is on­ly through the in­ter­play of dig­i­tal tools and our team‘s ideas that so­lu­tions are cre­at­ed which pay off for our cus­tomers in their chal­leng­ing bus­i­ness en­vi­ron­ment every day.”

Marco Dorigo,
Vice President Belt Conveyor Systems, Voith Turbo

It is on­ly through the in­ter­play of dig­i­tal tools and our team‘s ideas that so­lu­tions are cre­at­ed which pay off for our cus­tomers in their chal­leng­ing bus­i­ness en­vi­ron­ment every day.

Voith Turbo belt system expertise

For many dec­ades, Voith Turbo had been de­vel­op­ing and pro­duc­ing com­po­nents for belt con­vey­or sys­tems. Its prod­uct range in­cludes drive com­po­nents like cou­plings, com­plete drive­trains, belt con­vey­or con­trol sys­tem and con­veyor belt pul­leys. These prod­ucts have prov­en ef­fec­tive world­wide under tough con­di­tions in con­tin­u­ous op­er­a­tion and of­fer max­i­mum re­li­abil­ity. This is not by chance, but the re­sult of the in­ten­sive ex­am­i­na­tion by Voith Turbo ex­perts of the in­di­vid­u­al re­quire­ments of ev­ery sin­gle sys­tem.

Un­der the BeltGenius name, Voith Turbo brings to­geth­er prod­ucts and ser­vices that al­so en­able the mon­i­tor­ing of belt sys­tems, the op­ti­mi­za­tion of per­for­mance and de­sign, and the an­a­ly­sis and rec­ti­fi­ca­tion of faults. This serves as the start­ing point for data-based pro­cess mon­i­tor­ing and op­ti­mi­za­tion.

BeltGenius Conveyor Consulting makes knowhow accessible

This in­ten­sive en­gage­ment with the min­ing sec­tor and with cus­tomers has not on­ly led to an in-depth un­der­stand­ing of prod­ucts and tech­no­log­ies but al­so of belt con­vey­or sys­tems in gen­er­al. With BeltGenius Con­vey­or Con­sult­ing, Voith Turbo is mak­ing this knowl­edge ac­cess­ible, re­gard­less of wheth­er new belt con­vey­or sys­tems are be­ing planned or ex­ist­ing sys­tems are to be im­proved.

Cal­cu­la­tion soft­ware pro­grams form the ba­sis for the op­ti­mi­za­tion of belt con­vey­or sys­tems. For mod­el­ing pur­pos­es, Voith Turbo uses an IT so­lu­tion de­vel­oped in-house that is con­stant­ly be­ing up­dat­ed. Data from many dif­fer­ent sourc­es flow in­to the soft­ware. These in­clude data from test rig meas­ure­ments of real sys­tems, sci­en­tif­ic de­vel­op­ments e.g. as part of doc­tor­al the­ses, on­go­ing knowl­edge gains through BeltGenius ERIC pro­jects, and ex­ten­sive em­pir­ic­al val­ues. As a re­sult, the soft­ware pro­vides unique and pre­cise cal­cu­la­tions that al­low the ex­pe­ri­enced en­gi­neers at Voith Turbo to make sug­ges­tions for im­prove­ment based on a small vol­ume of data on a belt con­vey­or sys­tem.

“For an e­ven more ex­ten­sive ev­al­u­a­tion of data and root cause an­a­ly­sis, AI is in­dis­pens­able,” ex­plains Stefan Hut­zen­laub. “In this con­text, the BeltGenius team can draw on Voith’s ex­ist­ing AI-as­sist­ed so­lu­tion OnCare.In­Sight to ad­apt it for the spe­cif­ic use case.

Top-rate performance from a single source

When en­gag­ing Voith Turbo, cus­tomers ben­efit from the fact that from fault iden­ti­fi­ca­tion or pro­ject plan­ning to com­mis­sion­ing, eve­ry­thing comes from a sin­gle source. This a­voids in­ef­fi­cient and er­ror-prone in­ter­faces.

  • Sys­tem de­sign/fault iden­ti­fi­ca­tion us­ing BeltGenius Con­vey­or Con­sult­ing
  • Pro­ject plan­ning and man­u­fac­ture or ad­ap­ta­tion of suit­a­ble drive­train
  • Pa­ra­me­ter set­ting of Voith TurboBelt con­vey­or con­trol­ler, based on the sim­u­la­tion re­sults of BeltGenius Con­vey­or Con­sult­ing, al­ter­na­tive­ly, ad­ap­ta­tion of ex­ist­ing con­trol sys­tem
  • Com­missioning of belt conveyor sys­tem

BeltGenius Conveyor Consulting in action for Südwestdeut­sche Salzwerke

What can BeltGenius Con­vey­or Con­sult­ing do for a mine op­er­a­tor and its team? A great deal, as dem­on­strat­ed by the re­sults of a job done by our high­ly spe­cial­ized team of ex­perts for salt pro­duc­er Süd­west­deut­sche Salz­werke. Work­ing in a spirit of close part­ner­ship, a so­lu­tion could be de­vel­oped that im­proves ef­fi­cien­cy, in par­tic­u­lar by in­creas­ing the re­li­abil­i­ty of the belt con­vey­or sys­tem.

After:
The torques ap­plied dur­ing start­up were caus­ing neg­a­tive dy­nam­ic be­hav­ior in the belt sys­tem, which causes ex­ces­sive belt slack. The re­sult­ing bump in the belt led to ma­te­ri­al loss and as shown in the vid­eo, e­ven id­ler roll­er ejec­tion.
The belt con­vey­or starts up much more smooth­ly and is run­ning more even­ly in gen­er­al – re­duc­ing com­po­nent wear and pre­vent­ing ma­te­ri­al loss.
Before:
The torques ap­plied dur­ing start­up were caus­ing neg­a­tive dy­nam­ic be­hav­ior in the belt sys­tem, which causes ex­ces­sive belt slack. The re­sult­ing bump in the belt led to ma­te­ri­al loss and as shown in the vid­eo, e­ven id­ler roll­er ejec­tion.
I am im­pressed by Voith’s a­bil­i­ty to re­pro­duce real con­di­tions in the sim­u­la­tion of con­vey­or sys­tems. The pre­vail­ing prob­lem was re­pro­duced 1:1 with­in the sim­u­la­tion. The pro­posed so­lu­tions were al­so sim­u­lat­ed in ad­vance and oc­curred in the same way in re­al­i­ty af­ter their im­ple­men­ta­tion. The co­op­er­a­tion with Voith was ve­ry fo­cused, so­lu­tion-driv­en, and o­ver­all a pleas­ant ex­pe­ri­ence. We look for­ward to work­ing with Voith on fur­ther pro­jec­ts.

Christian Pönisch,
Südwestdeutsche Salzwerke AG Heilbronn

Improvements achieved at Südwestdeutsche Salzwerke in Heilbronn:

0% material loss

3
3
space requirement for tensioning device
22
22
tension in belt on startup and as a result, reduction in wear of numerous components
700
700
increase in conveying capacity per hour
28
28
temperature reserve for startup process
25
25
increased operating time per year
Belt Genius - Next-level conveyor performance

Belt Genius

Next-level conveyor performance

TurboBelt TPXL- & DriveControl 
for non-stop conveyor efficiency.

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