Horizontal Curves

Horizontal curves are now a common engineering design option for bulk material handling conveyor designers.

They are commonly used on long overland conveyors in order to take advantage of a preferred route therefore reducing the need for expensive bridges, tunnels or overpasses. As most operators will attest, a conveyor transfer point is the most costly area to operate and maintain and the source of most airborne dust. Reduce the number of transfer points, and long-term conveyance cost will come down as will the source of most operational headaches.

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Every belt conveyor is unique.

Belt Conveyors which involve horizontal curves are among some of the most unique in the world. Each design must be carefully analyzed because the only way to test it, is to build it.

As such, sound design, engineering and analysis is an absolute necessity. This requires a combination of computational excellence and practical experience. At Overland Conveyor, all of our associates are engineers and half have advanced engineering degrees. Our numerical modeling capabilities are indeed impressive. But we also have a combined 64 years of belt conveyance experience which has taken us all over the world.

Overland Conveyor's horizontal curve technology was originally developed in 1983 and has been successful utilized on many projects since. It has been reviewed and updated many times since with the last one occurring in 1997. Today it stands as one of the foremost design tools of its kind.

A typical horizontal curve analysis must be conducted in conjunction with both static and dynamic belt tension analysis to accurately predict belt drift during various loaded and unloaded conditions as well as belt transverse stress distributions.