Drag Conveyor Calculator

A drag (en-masse) conveyor pushes bulk material through a fully enclosed trough using flights bolted to a chain, so unlike an open belt, the material's cross-section is fixed by the trough's width, height, and how full you run it. This calculator first computes that cross-sectional area from trough width times height times your fill percentage, then works backward from your target throughput to find the chain speed needed to move that much material per hour — clamping the result to the 0.05–0.5 m/s range typical of real en-masse conveyors, since going faster tends to degrade fragile material and going slower risks poor fill. The actual achievable capacity at that clamped speed is reported separately from your requested throughput so you can see if the trough size needs to change. Chain pull is built from three additive forces: friction between the material column and the trough walls (using a fixed 0.45 friction coefficient), friction between the chain itself and its guide rails (0.2 coefficient, based on an estimated chain-and-flight weight that scales with trough width), and the lift force if the conveyor rises vertically.

Motor power follows directly from chain pull times chain speed, divided by your drive efficiency. The required chain breaking strength applies an 8x safety factor over the calculated pull — standard practice for drag chains, which see shock loading from flight impacts. Because friction coefficients and chain weight are engineering estimates rather than measured values, use the outputs for preliminary sizing and confirm final chain and motor selection against your manufacturer's published ratings for your specific material.