Maintenance of Belt Conveyor Systems in Poland - An Overview

The tendency to increase efficiency and safety in mining industry leads to quick development of monitoring, diagnostic and management systems. It can cover different aspect of mining activities. In this paper recent achievement in Polish mining industry related to machinery systems will be discussed. Selected solutions deployed by research teams from Wroclaw University of Technology in both opencast and underground mining companies in Poland will be briefly presented and discussed. The purpose of this paper is to provide current state of the research and practices focused on maintenance of belt conveyors. In particular, among others, following projects will be overviewed : i) Online monitoring system for drive units developed for lignite mine, ii) Portable monitoring system for conveyor belt with steel cords developed for lignite mine, iii), Diag Manager - maintenance system for belt conveyor transport network, iv) Laboratory and in situ research on belt conveyor technology (belts, joints, idlers resistance to motion, energy efficiency, etc). The Authors will try to summarize challenges in this field and point out future work at the end of the paper