The Control System for Leveling Loads in a Drag Conveyor Multi-Motor Drive

Drag conveyor is the main means of delivering coal from the cutter loader to the vehicles of the belt entry in under-ground mining of coal deposits. In powerful drag conveyors, in conditions of limited equipment in terms of dimensions, a multi-motor electric drive is used, including from two to four electric motors. The load imbalance between the motors in such an electric drive is its main problem. In order to solve this problem, the existing methods of load balancing in a multi-motor electric drive have been analyzed and a strategy for a variable frequency drive with vector control of sev-eral motors based on the "master-slave" principle has been proposed. In this case, the main motor is controlled by the speed controller, and the slave motor is controlled using the torque command strategy. This control scheme has been implemented in the MATLAB/Simulink environment. The simulation results showed that the master-slave control mode can solve the problem of the load leveling of the drag conveyor in all modes of its operation, thereby increasing the life of the drag conveyor, reducing equipment wear, and thus increasing the efficiency of mine production.