Tension monitoring for the ring chain transmission system using an observer-based tension distribution estimation method

This article demonstrates the tension distribution estimation method for the ring chain transmission system of scraper conveyer, which is based on multi-body dynamics theory and linear state observer. As designed, a multi-body dynamic model of ring chain transmission system is constructed using ADAMS dynamic design software, and a mathematical model solved by MATLAB functions is established and adopted to verify system performance of the dynamic model by comparing the simulation results. In practical terms, tension monitoring of ring chains is virtually unreasonable due to difficulties of direct measurement and restrictions of high-cost tension sensors during the process of mechanized coal mining. Besides, the change law of tension distribution of the ring chain transmission system has mainly been obtained via heuristic experience, coupled with simple calculations. The proposed estimation method makes it feasible to obtain all the contact forces of ring chains based on the measurable state variables. For research purpose, the state-space modeling allows the reconstruction of the tension observer and flexible application for numerical solutions based on Runge–Kutta equations. However, the high-dimensional tension observer has inherent drawbacks of heavy computational loads. In such cases, a novel dimension-minimized algorithm is proposed for high-order matrices solution, which makes the observer very attractive for applications in dimensionality reduction. Furthermore, the practicability of the proposed estimation method is verified with simulation evaluation and deviation analysis.