The Use of Vibration for Material Handling

In this paper a general survey of material handling by vibrating equipment is presented with a discussion on applications and basic design considerations. Attention is given to the need of designing vibrating equipment properly in order not to produce unacceptable environmental pollution in the form of noise and structural vibrations. It is also shown in this paper that the stiffness method of structural analysis may be applied effectively in the design and analysis of vibrating conveyors to give accurately the motion and the forces along a vibrating conveyor. The effect of the vibrating material is considered in the analysis as mass effect and equivalent frictional factors. Experiments conducted for the determination of these factors are reported. Also, a computer program outline for the analysis of vibrating conveyors under load is presented and numerical examples are given to illustrate the method.