How to choose a belt drive

This is one of the SEED curriculum engineering design guides. SEED (Sharing Experience in Engineering Design) is an organisation of teachers of design in tertiary education.

You can use this guide to determine the attributes required of a belt drive to meet a specific power transmission need and then to select a drive from those offered by manufacturers. The successful selection of a suitable belt drive is the result of matching the requirements of the power transmission system with one of the range of belt systems offered by the manufacturers. Thus, information about both the system and the hardware available is necessary, and the selection process entails six consecutive stages:

1. Gathering information about the system
2. Deciding on influential factors
3. Establishing limits of acceptability for factors
4. Collating information from manufacturers
5. Selecting a suitable element
6. Seeking follow-up advice

The guide also has information on how to specify the environment and operating conditions and the performance of the belt drive, how to select the belt drive required, and how to install the belt drive. Other information includes details of belt drive types currently available, power ranges, belt drive manufacturers, and suggested further reading.

Reference should be made at every stage to the Product Design Specification (PDS) for the system (all the relevant factors should be described in a well written PDS). Note that, before embarking on the selection process, you should ensure that the need for a belt drive, as distinct from other forms of drive, has been carefully considered. The Guides at higher levels in the Mechanical Power Transmission Series provide assistance in this process.

[Description and screenshot taken from the SEED Curriculum for Engineering Design page for this guide. (c) The Design Society used under the terms of their (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) license.]

Link: http://www.bath.ac.uk/idmrc/themes/projects/delores/co-design-website/dpg/bel/belhome.htm
Author: P. H. Hamilton; Anna Pollard
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
Rights: Copyright 2011 The Design Society - This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. See http://www.bath.ac.uk/idmrc/themes/projects/delores/co-design-website/teachers/curriculum/about.html