Study of energy efficiency comparison between smooth V-belt and cogged V-belt for power transmission

Abstract

In the United States, annually about 0.4 Trillion kWh of electricity is used in electric motors or mechanical drives. A good majority use belt drives for power transmission between the electric motor and mechanical load. The power transmission efficiency of the belt drives, according to most references and manufacturers in their catalogues, varies between 90 and 98 percent [1,2]. The aim of this study is to identify the key parameters to be measured, to determine the change in the efficiency of a cogged v-belt-driven motor over a smooth v-belt-driven motor. Cogged v-belts are typically estimated to improve power transmission by 3-6 percent in efficiency over smooth V-belt-driven systems [2,3]. Since there is no generally accepted theory on power transmission in belt drives, it is hard to obtain reliable efficiency values from theoretical models [1]. The outcome of this research will be an empirical approach to determine the potential increase in the energy efficiency of the system by replacing the smooth v-belt with a cogged v-belt. In addition, the belt drive parameters which affect the power transmission such as pulley diameter, belt tension, belt length, angular speeds of the pulleys, the motor speed [1,2,4-7] are evaluated as well. The approach will be developed with input from the tests done by varying the centre distance between the pulleys, pulley diameters, length of the belts, belt tension, motor speeds, and runtime of the system. The final objective of this research would be to develop a scheme to measure parameters during an assessment and use those to make an informed decision on the potential improvement in the energy efficiency of the system using a cogged v-belt over a smooth v-belt.