Q2. What are the characteristics of rubber failure due to wear?
The characteristics of rubber failure due to wear appear as shredding, tearing, pulling and rolling into a curl accompanied by local irreversible changes in elastomeric properties such as tensile strength, elongation at break and hardness (29).
Q3. What is the main reason for the shortening of a conveyor belt’s service life?
Long-term storage, which is not compliant with the applicable standards, contributes to the shortening of a belt’s service life (16).
Q4. Why are conveyor belts being used widely in mines, ports and cement plants?
Despite high maintenance cost, conveyor belts are being used widely in mines, ports and cement plants due to their constructive and physical adaptability.
Q5. What is the main purpose of a conveyor belt?
Conveyor belt is one of the primary systems used in mining and industries to transport bulk materials in continuous/semi-continuous mode (1, 2) over the distances of few metres to several kilometres.
Q6. What is the main reason for the cost of maintenance and replacement of wear-out components?
As the system involves number of moving components, wear and friction are inevitable and thus material transportation on conveyors is costly due to continual maintenance and replacement of wear-out components, which reflects on significant production and financial cost (2).
Q7. What can be the way to ensure the safety of a conveyor belt?
Proper selection of suitable belt conveyor types can guarantee high operational safety, high productivity of labour, simple operation and maintenance, as well as a minimum environmental impact(11, 12).
Q8. What is the mechanism used to explain the formation of abrasion pattern in rubber?
Fukahori et al. (51, 56, 59-61) used fracture mechanics to explain the formation of abrasion pattern in rubber by relating two kinds of periodic motions: micro-vibration generated during slip stage of stickslip motion and stick-slip oscillation.
Q9. What is the effect of friction on the wear of rubber?
In most cases, the wear mechanism and wear rate of materials are correlated with different parameters such as load, sliding distance, friction, and mechanical properties of rubbers such as, tensile and tear strengths.
Q10. What are the main factors that lead to failures of a conveyor belt?
The large number of manufacturing, storage, manipulation, and operational activities performed during the service life of a conveyor belt are likely to lead to failures.
Q11. How much of the XNBR was compared to other samples?
The tensile strength and dynamic co-efficient of friction of sample containing 80 wt.% of XNBR was high compared to other samples by 2% and 10% respectively.
Q12. What is the mechanism proposed by Champ et al.?
Following the needle scratch experiments of Schallamach (49), a mechanism is proposed by Champ et al. (53) and others (34, 54, 55), which relates wear rate to fatigue crack growth rate and characteristics by using a fracture mechanics approach.
Q13. What is the wear rate of rubber against hard and soft rock surfaces?
The wear rate of rubber against hard and soft rock surface can also be correlated with the frictional work, Fw, where volume loss,V = k. (Fw) n (3)Constants k and n depend on the chemical composition and hardness of rock and rubber surfaces.
Q14. What is the important factor that affects the lifetime of conveyer belt?
As evident in literature, most important factor that affect the lifetime of conveyer belt is ‘wear’ during material transportation.
Q15. What is the relationship between wear and friction in rubber?
For instance, Felhös et al. (86) indicated that with increasing silica content in HNBR, wear resistance and friction coefficient enhances for a pin (steel)-on-plate (rubber) wear test.
Q16. What is the problem of rubber degradation in conveyor belts?
The problem of rubber degradation in conveyor belts is a very important question, because the conveyor belt incorporates a lot amount of rubber, which is an expensive base material (28).