Transfer Chutes

Design & simulation solutions for transfer chutes.

Designing reliable conveyor systems for bulk materials transfer is fraught with a variety of unique challenges. Material properties such as cohesiveness and moisture content and particle size and shape can significantly impact flow behavior and system performance. LEAP provides several tools to aid transfer chute design, enabling the production of less expensive, more efficient and longer lasting chutes.

Reduce or Avoid Blockages

A variety of factors such as varying material properties, particle size distributions, wet and dry materials and cohesion can lead to transfer chute blockages, resulting in costly downtime.

By adopting simulation early in the design phase blockages can be reduced or avoided entirely. Simulation allows you to optimise material throughput, determine the ideal sizing and placement of rock ladder shelf / rock boxes and identify problem areas where the design can be improved.

Discrete Element Method (DEM) plays a pivotal role in optimising chute design to minimise blockages, enhancing material flow efficiency and system reliability. Here’s how DEM contributes to this optimisation process:

Simulation of Particle Behaviour
Material Properties and Interactions
Geometry Optimisation
Identification of Problem Areas
Evaluation of External Factors
Iterative Design Process
Cost and Time Efficiency

Click above to see how Conveyor Dynamics Inc. used Rocky DEM and Ansys Mechanical to analyse and optimise their transfer chute design.

Reduce Impact Plate Wear

Simulation helps to understand the reasons/causes for wear and provides improved accuracy of force predictions on plates which leads to better overall life prediction.

Simulation allows you to rapidly test many different designs to troubleshoot performance and identify weak points in the system.

Optimising the position/angles of impact plates can help to reduce maintenance and downtime and improve predictability.

Balancing Chute Flow

Uneven flow onto conveyors can lead to a loss of efficiency (processing speed) and material loss as well as unexpected wear, reducing life on key components such as chutes, pulleys and belts.

Simulation enables the assessment of the overall system performance which helps to identify problem areas and allows you to test different operational parameters such as belt speed & width to reduce bottlenecks and optimise the shape of the material waterfall.

Reduce preferential wear on each side of the conveyor and on the chute
Reduce chances of chute clogging
Find the ideal operating conditions for higher efficiency
Evaluate material accumulation inside the chute
Predict forces on the geometries that might lead to failures
See how the material flows inside the chute through tracking of particle trajectories

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