Case Study: Taylor Creek WWTP | Cleves, Ohio, USA
Engineering Challenge
There are very few rim drives in the United States today because of several shortcomings associated with this design, mainly in the areas of complicity and maintenance. For a rim drive to work properly, it needs a bearing in the center, a drive unit and a set of wheels running on the rim, a pivot joint in the center to compensate the rim being out of planeness, and a slip ring to transmit power from a stationary fixture to the drive unit running on the rim. However, some of these pieces are very prone to failure. Not only this, but there are problems posed by traction deficiency in icy months. For these reasons, the customer decided to convert the rim drive design to a center drive unit.
Solution
Because of the product customization DBS offers, Pelton Environmental Products, a local representative, referred them to DBS and a D30-BE was designed for the client. The DBS pier mount center drive replaces all the pieces in one integral unit which has much fewer moving parts and very little maintenance requirement. Also, it permanently eliminates the rim traction problem associated with ice buildup on the track. The DBS center drive eliminates almost all the maintenance requirements and is impervious to weather conditions.