2024-07-30
Characteristics of V Belt
They stretch and slip just a little, which gives us a couple nice properties. For one this help to reduce the transmission of shock loads through the system, when the load spikes the belt stretches slightly and slips on the pulley slightly and both cushion that spike somewhat. The V-belts stretch and slip also means you can put multiple belts in parallel and expect them to share the load equally. If I need twice the power transmission and don’t want to use a bigger belt I can use two small ones. If one belt starts out taking more load than the other it’s going to slip a bit until both are evenly loaded. This might seem like a given, but on a stiffer drive system like a timing belt, roller chain, gear box, etc. it’s not at all guaranteed that multiple elements will equally share a load. You could wind up with one element doing all or most of the work, until it fails, then the other does all the work and also quickly fails.