Study of Flat Belt Drive Mechanics

The Mechanics between belt and pulley in flat belt drive running is complicated. Since no inertial force or only partial inertial force was taken into account before, it is necessary to add in the inertial affection fully for more accurate dynamic analysis modeling of the flat belt drive. In the assumption that belt material is deformed in linear elasticity and the flat belt drive is running in steady state, the dynamic equilibrium equations of radial and tangent directions are presented and simplified through the belt infinitesimal element processing and the equations associated with mechanical coefficients and dimensions are also derived. After building up the relations of constitutive equations and geometric boundary equations, the solutions to the dynamic differential equations have been found. The sample flat belt drive is introduced for performing method application and obtained adequate calculation results. It is concluded that the presented method calculation results make the maximum transmission momentum tends to be smaller and the slip angle tends to be bigger than the traditional one. And the fluctuation range is mainly depending on the belt speed and the belt stiffness. This method is valuable for dynamic analysis and the design methodology of belt drive.