Belt conveyors operating in humid environments frequently experience slippage or belt misalignment between the drive roller and the belt, causing numerous adverse effects on production and transportation. Therefore, implementing measures to prevent conveyor belt slippage is crucial for the safe operation of belt conveyors. Our company has designed a roller-coating structure with frustum-shaped recesses based on the adsorption principle of vacuum suction cups to increase the roller’s frictional driving force, thereby preventing conveyor belt slippage.

Current Status of Drive Roller Development: The drive roller is a crucial component in belt conveyors, transmitting power through friction with the belt. Traditional drive rollers come in two surface types: smooth steel and rubber-lined. Early smooth steel rollers were simple to manufacture, but had a low coefficient of friction on the contact surface, resulting in poor conveying capacity; they were generally used in low-power, short-distance conveyors. Today, rubber-lined rollers are more commonly used. Their surface is coated with a layer of high-friction rubber, preventing residue adhesion and increasing the coefficient of friction. Currently, rubber-lined rollers are categorized by surface shape into smooth rubber, herringbone groove rubber, and diamond-patterned rubber, to meet different application requirements.

In recent years, to address the shortcomings of rubber bushings, such as poor wear resistance, low coefficient of friction, and low transmission efficiency in conveyors, ceramic bushing technology has been developed abroad. This technology was developed based on rubber bushings. It can be understood as modularly pressing many ceramic pieces with small protrusions into the surface of the rubber bushing. Under the pressure of the conveyor belt, the protrusions of thousands of ceramic pieces act on the contact surface, effectively increasing the traction force of the roller and greatly improving the wear resistance of the bushing.

A new breakthrough in anti-slip research: Domestic and international engineers have made various improvements to the surface of the drive rollers to address the belt slippage problem in belt conveyors. The main improvement involves coating the roller surface with special materials, transforming the original contact between a flexible and rigid body into a contact between a flexible and an elastic body. This improves the frictional characteristics of the contact surface and increases the frictional driving force.

Many factors influence frictional performance, primarily the materials, surface morphology, and operating conditions of the contact surfaces between the conveyor belt and the rollers. Different materials and surface morphologies of the coating have varying effects on increasing the frictional driving force.