Oscillating and vibrating conveyors and design fundamentals of these conveyors

Vibrations have always been a fascinating or intriguing subject to engineers. They have traditionally been trying to either avoid or apply them, depending on the requirements. For the majority of bulk materials handling equipment, such as belt conveyors, screw conveyors, bucket elevators etc. engineers try to strongly reduce or eliminate the occurrence of vibrations. On the other hand vibrations can be used effectively in the design of oscillating and vibrating conveyors which are drived using vibration principles. Oscillating and vibrating conveyors have a wide usage range in the industry because they have a simple construction and are suitable for transmitting big pieces and high heated materials. Oscillating and vibratory conveyors are highly used for discharging, conveying, feeding, dosing and distributing bulk materials in many branches of industry. Some of the disadvantages of such conveyors are the relatively short conveyor lengths, the limited capacities and the material degradation. In this study, the motion of the bulk metarials on the vibrating table and phases of this motion have been analysed theoretically. Here, vibrating conveyors have been classified widely and general knowledge related to their constructions have been presented. Furthermore, the effect of material loading on the starting and transition over resonance of a vibratory conveyor have been researched. In addition to these, for conveyors with a constant pressure of the load on the trough bottom, alteration of material advancement amount in one period according to following parameters is presented by graphics provided by mathematica software; i)crankshaft speed, ii) friction coefficient, iii) ratio of friction coefficients, iv) ratio of lengths of pieces in the mechanism. Most suitable parameters for several materials and transfer speeds can be selected by means of these graphics. Keywords: oscillating conveyors, vibratory conveyors, vibrating table, bulk metarial, trough.