Double-deck vibrating flip-flow screens have been widely used for the repurposing of decoration waste; however, the influence of shear spring stiffness on the screen’s vibration characteristics is under-researched. The shear spring stiffness affects the amplitude–frequency characteristics, phase–frequency characteristics, screening performance and processing capacity of the screen. In this paper, a mathematical model of the double-deck vibrating flip-flow screen is proposed based on a vibrating system with three degrees of freedom. Based on the experiments of the industrial screen, the amplitude–frequency and phase–frequency characteristics of the double-deck vibrating flip-flow screen were studied. Within the range of 25 to 75 rad/s, the amplitude of the main screen frame decreased gradually, the floating screen frames decreased at first and then increased and the amplitudes of the main and floating screen frames were dependent on the stiffness of the isolation springs and shear springs. When the frequency was 75 rad/s, the stiffness of the upper and lower shear springs was 11,440 kN/m, respectively, and the screening efficiency reached 97.09%.

The vibrating flip-flow screen (VFFS) is a high-efficiency device currently used for deep screening of moist fine-grained materials. During VFFS operation, the normal operation of the screen is affected by fatigue damage to the shear springs arranged symmetrically on both sides of the screen, leading to equipment failures and disruption production. In this paper, the shear spring’s static and dynamic characteristics in different operation conditions were studied using the INSTRON 8801 fatigue test system and Dynacell dynamic sensors. Using an experimental test of shear spring stiffness and damping coefficients, the effects of some factors, i.e., temperature, hardness, amplitude and frequency, were studied. The results show that the temperature of the shear spring on the left side of the flip-flow screen was higher than that of the right side (driving side). With an increase in temperature, the stiffness of the shear spring decreased. With the increase in amplitude, the dynamic stiffness decreased and the damping coefficients did not change; with the increase in frequency, the dynamic stiffness increased and the damping coefficient decreased. At the same amplitude, with the increase in hardness of the shear spring, the dynamic stiffness increased. Finally, the stiffness and damping coefficients of the shear spring before and after tearing were obviously reduced. These research results reveal the relationship of the characteristics of a shear spring with operational conditions, and could provide a theoretical reference for the design of the VFFS and the selection of the shear spring.

To solve the problem of high energy consumption caused by the large initial material pressure of the feeding system, the macroscopic and mesoscopic laws of the effect of the movement of the feeder on the material pressure were studied, and an optimization method of changing the initial position of the feeder to reduce the initial material pressure is proposed. First, the influence of the movement direction of the feeder on the material pressure was studied based on the discrete element method and verified by experiments. A single-factor experiment was designed to analyze the influence of particle size, material repose angle, and bin slope on material pressure, drawing the applicable conditions of the proposed method. On this basis, the influence of the movement state of the feeder on the change of material pressure during the descent process was studied. Then, the motion parameters of the selected feeder descending process were optimized by the response surface method. Finally, case analyses of the vibrating feeding system and the scraper feeding system were carried out. The Discrete Element Method (DEM) calculation results show that the movement of the feeder will cause different distributions and evolution of the force chain on the mesoscale, which will result in different changes in the macroscopic material pressure. The initial material pressure and the material resistance were reduced in the optimized feeding system.