Conveyor belt condition monitoring system and method

1 . A method of monitoring a conveyor belt state, the method comprising:

(a) monitoring the acoustic emissions from a conveyor belt using an optical waveguide interrogator, the optical waveguide interrogator outputting a series of data bins representing the temporal evolution of the acoustic emissions received along the optical waveguide; and

(b) utilizing the temporal evolution of the acoustic emissions of adjacent data bins to detect anomalies in the conveyor belt state,

wherein the utilizing step further comprises using a Hough transform or an edge detection kernel for determining edge measures corresponding to movement along the conveyor belt in the temporal evolution of the acoustic emissions of adjacent bins as an anomaly in the conveyor belt state, and

wherein the Hough transform or edge detection kernel is angle sensitive to the velocity component of the conveyor belt.

2 . The method as claimed in claim 1 , wherein step (a) further includes:

determining the temporal evolution of a measure of the power intensity for adjacent data bins to detect anomalies in the conveyor belt state.

3 . The method as claimed in claim 1 , further comprising applying a Hanning window to the data bins.

4 . The method as claimed in claim 1 , further comprising applying a frequency filter to the data bins to filter out predetermined frequency ranges.

5 . A method of determining the state of a moving conveyor belt in a conveyor belt system, the method including the steps of:

(a) recording an acoustic signature at a series of spaced apart points adjacent the conveyor belt;

(b) plotting the temporal evolution of the recorded acoustic signature for the space apart points; and

(c) determining correlations between adjacent space apart points indicative of a malfunction in the moving conveyor belt,

wherein the determining includes determining the state of both forward and return aspects of the moving conveyor belt.

6 . The method as claimed in claim 5 , wherein said acoustic signature is band pass filtered.

7 . The method as claimed in claim 5 , wherein said acoustic signature is recorded by means of an optical waveguide placed along side the conveyor belt, the waveguide being interconnected to an interrogator for recording the acoustic signature.

8 . The method as claimed in claim 5 , wherein at least one enhancement filter is applied to the plot enhancing predetermined directional motion of belt artifacts.

9 . A system configured to implement the method of claim 1 .