General

Fan belts are the workhorse within industry, available from virtually every distributor and adaptable to practically any drive. They are presently available in a wide variety of standard sizes and types, for transmitting almost any amount of load power.

Operation

Typically, fan belts drives operate best at speeds between 1500 to 6000 ft/min ( 8 and 30 m/s). For standard fan belts, ideal peak capacity speed is approximately 4500 ft/min (23 m/s). Narrow fan belts, however, will operate up to 10,000 ft/min (50 m/s).

Advantages

• Fan belt drives permit large speed ratios and provide long life. They are easily installed and removed, quiet, and low maintenance.
• Initial selection and design consideration fan belt application
• How much power do you need to transmit and at what speed?
• Service factor fan belts your particular application.
• Determine the fan belt design horsepower.
• Based on your results, determine which belt section would be appropriate for your drive – See fan belt supplier. Narrow belt sheaves are more compact than Classical belt sheaves. Some fan belts are more appropriate for specific applications.
• Determine the ratio of your drive application based on the Ratio formula – center distance has been pre-selected based on the drive size.
• Find the number of fan belts required by dividing the design horsepower by the belt/HP.
• Verify the validity of this drive by consulting the number of grooves available in these sheave sizes.
• Verify if dynamic balancing is needed for each sheave based on the Dynamic or Two-Plane Balancing formula .