Design of a conveyor belt idler roller using a hybrid topology/parametric optimization approach

Resumo

A significant part of iron ore cost is due to transportation. Around 30% of this cost consists in replacing
idlers in conveyor belts. Thus, a proper design of the idler is of great economic importance. Another crucial
aspect is the ergonomics related to idlers replacement due to its weight and logistics. Having this in mind, the
usage of a robust optimization methodology for the conveyor belt idlers becomes essential to reduce the cost
of the mining process and improve idler replacement conditions. Polymeric materials have a great potential to
reduce idlers weight due to their low density. However, polymers have lower Youngs’s modulus when compared
to metals, making a hybrid design (metal + polymer) a very suitable option for the idler. Polymers can be easily
molded by additive manufacturing, thus, a great range of different shapes can be obtained. In this case, topology
optimization methods are suitable to obtain an optimum manufacturable design. However, the steel part (shaft)
has less flexibility in the design. Its topology and shape being fixed, levaves only a few parameters to define the
part design. In this case, a parametric optimization is applicable. This paper presents a systematic procedure that
combines both parametric and topology optimization to obtain an optimum design for a conveyor belt idler. The
topology optimization scheme is used within the parametric optimization iterations with different combinations of
the geometric parameters of the shaft to build a surrogate model. Then, the surrogate model is optimized using an
improved sequential least-squares quadratic programming (SLSQP) method.