A Digitization Framework for Belt Rotation Monitoring in Pipe Conveyor Applications

Pipe conveyors provide an environmentally friendly alternative to open-troughed bulk solids conveyance, particularly for long or complex routing applications. However, the sustainability of this technology is compromised by unstable operations. Complex routing, operational variations, and environmental factors create uneven contact forces, triggering belt rotation. This is a critical failure mode that requires continuous monitoring throughout the conveyor's lifecycle. Insufficient failure data represents a typical challenge for this application. This study hypothesized technological principles that constitute the minimum requirements for enabling the scaling of industrial applications of belt rotation monitoring. Enabling technologies were adopted to foster innovation, and a physical prototype was implemented to address data scarcity for this failure mode. Using a controller-responder wireless network of ESP32 Industrial Internet of Things devices, we developed a belt-independent measurement system with multiparameter capability. Key criteria for detecting unsafe operational states and a criticality-based approach for determining optimal measuring unit quantities were established. The measurement results demonstrated suitable precision for digitization objectives: overlap angle (3.3107° ± 16.7562°), pipe diameter (+13.3850 ± 7.2114 mm), and overlap length (-26.2750 ± 25.1536 mm), based on 307 samples with a latency of 350.1303 ms. The framework demonstrates potential for industrial deployment with acceptable performance for real-time monitoring.