Abstract: Aiming at the problems of low transmission efficiency, poor transmission stability, and significant noise and vibration caused by tension fluctuations in the chain drive system of coal mine scraper conveyors, this paper investigates the formation mechanism of chain tension fluctuations. A model of the scraper conveyor chain drive system was built using SolidWorks 2019 and imported into ADAMS, where boundary conditions and driving torque were applied for numerical simulation. The results show that during operation, the tension in the chain drive system fluctuates considerably, reaching a maximum value of 47.5 kN at 40 s. From the tight side to the slack side, the tension locally increases first and then decreases. The overall tension of the scraper chain on the tight side exhibits a gradually increasing trend, while the overall trend on the slack side remains essentially unchanged. A field test conducted on an SGZ764/2×315 scraper conveyor at Yitang Coal Mine indicates that the tight-side tension is basically consistent with the simulation results. To reduce the tension fluctuation of the scraper conveyor, the polygon effect can be mitigated by adding tensioning sprockets.