An approach to reliability evaluation of multiple V-belt drives considering the deviation of belt length

Multiple V-belt drives are applied widely to the mechanical engineering industry. To improve their performance and reduce their risk in the course of running, some reliability models of multiple V-belt drives have been presented in recent years. In these models the lengths of individual belts in a multiple V-belt drive were regarded as identical. However, in practice the length deviations among individual belts in a multiple V-belt drive do exist. In this paper, the effect of belt length deviation on the transmitted power of a multiple V-belt drive is analysed in detail. The operation risk of a multiple V-belt drive is defined as the probability that the actual transmitted power is less than the rated power that ensures the multiple V-belt drives to perform its intended task. Then an approach to risk evaluation of a multiple V-belt drive is presented by using the universal generating function technique and the reliability model of a multistate weighted k-out-of-n system. Finally, the effectiveness of this approach is demonstrated by an example.