It would be easy to say: Get 3D! But actually this can be done in illustrator or at least it's possible to make something resembling. Blending is the key as you have guessed.

Blending black disks with a thin white stroke AND inserting a curved spine gives this:

[![enter image description here][1]][1]

The thin stroke is actually needed only to show the borders of the pieces. It helps the actual coloring.

With shape builder one can fill half of the black areas to white after the blend is expanded and ungrouped. Filling is a slow job because there are so many crossing curves, but it will really come out. Select all, click the shape builder tool, select fill color and paint over areas which belong to the same belt.

[![enter image description here][2]][2]

I didn't fill them all because the job would take a long time. Actually also he black areas should be united to belts, because you may want to recolor them. That fortunately is possible easily with the pathfinder panel after all white belts are ready. Select one black piece, goto Select > Same > Fill color, Click Unite in the Pathfinder panel, Ungroup.

Finally one can draw a couple of white rings to the visible end and insert a grey background:

[![enter image description here][3]][3]

The final shape should have slight gradients instead of pure black and white to make it more 3D-like. That's called "shading". Working in 3D creates the shading nearly with no effort, but in 2D it's often a substantial percentage of the work and needs much practicing before the eye starts to see what's needed.

  [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/y9oNb.jpg
  [2]: https://i.sstatic.net/M3jJ3.jpg
  [3]: https://i.sstatic.net/meWLH.jpg