Automated Tension Belt Status Monitoring

Tension belts are used in transport vehicles to secure the load. To remain overall safety, some regulations need to be applied using the tension belts. Some of those are summarized in DIN EN 12195-2. One regulation is, that the damage of used tension belts needs to be in certain ranges. Especially, small cuts on the edges of the tension belts unavoidably occurring in real working environments may be tolerated to a certain degree. Furthermore, even if the belt is in good health condition, using it in the field in an inappropriate way also endangers the safe transport of the good. E.g., if the belt is getting loose during the ride the good is no longer safely stored. How will the driver know? Applying automatic condition control of the tension belt and all related parameters (e.g., tension force, health status of the tension belt) would help to more safely transport goods on vehicles. In this paper we propose some technical solutions towards a smart tension belt allowing safer transport of goods on the road.