Alexander Yuryevich Zakharov

Suspended conveyor belts are widely used in mining, including in systems with non-contact support such as magnetically suspended conveyors, where the maximum admissible linear mass of the loaded belt determines the required supporting forces. This paper presents a method for estimating the upper limit of the linear mass of a suspended belt for a given belt width and bulk material. Several cross-sectional configurations are analysed, and analytical expressions for the bulk cross-sectional area under limiting fill are derived. A numerical search over the troughing radius is then performed to find the radius that maximises the cross-sectional area and to select the configuration that provides the largest area. For this configuration, the extremum condition leads to a transcendental equation; so, symbolic regression with the PySR package is used to obtain an explicit approximation for the radius that maximises the area as a function of belt width and angle of repose. Substituting this expression into the standard formula for linear mass yields a closed-form estimate of the maximum admissible linear mass. Numerical examples show good agreement with the optimisation results and indicate that the formula is suitable for preliminary design of suspended and magnetically suspended belt conveyors.