Influence of Disinfectants on Airport Conveyor Belts

Abstract

The coronavirus disease has influenced almost all of our everyday activities. Traveling and transportation have been influenced significantly and there is no doubt that air transportation has been restricted and therefore reduced considerably. It is predicted that the change back to pre-pandemic conditions will take several years, and so it is a reasonable assumption that disinfectants will be used more frequently for a long time. The presented article initially deals with the possible impacts of the pandemic on aircraft infrastructure—namely, on the influence of disinfectants on the rubber materials used, for example, in conveyor belts. The proposed methodology is based on the Weibull analysis for conveyor belt lifetime prediction regarding the impact of disinfectants. The Weibull distribution is a continuous probability distribution that can be applied as a theoretical model for statistical data processing. It was named after Weibull, who suggested shape, scale, and location parameters that made the distribution meaningful and useful. Currently, this distribution is applied in many areas, such as biology, economics, and hydrology. In engineering applications, it can be used for reliability and survival analysis. It is used mainly in cases where failure time is dependent on the operating hours, cycles, or age of the component. In the reliability area, it can be used, for example, to predict the lifetime or failure time of a component. To show the consequences of material changes due to the use of disinfectants, this article also presents a CAE (Computer Aided Engineering) analysis that was used for the evaluation of other hyperelastic material characteristics. This research is based on the results of experimental measurements, during which the influence of the types of disinfectant commonly used for the elimination of the coronavirus disease on airport conveyor belt rubber segments was tested. From the performed analysis, it was found that the influence of disinfectants on the material characteristics, including material hardness, elasticity, and static and dynamic loading, could be significant. Therefore, the probability of mechanical damage to the rubber part of the conveyor belt becomes higher, and time intervals for the maintenance or repair of airport conveyor belts should be considered.