A suspended buffer system reduces the out-of-pipe speed of gangue particles to a reasonable value, which prevents damage to the gangue storage silo. During the buffering process, the kinetics energy of gangue particles is dissipated by particle collision and structural damping of the suspended buffer, with the remaining energy being the residual kinetics energy of gangue particles. The ratios of these energies are important indicators of the buffering effect and are the basis for feeding safety judgment. Therefore, it is necessary to reveal the kinetic energy transformation pattern of gangue particles during the collision process. This paper established a numerical kinetic energy transformation model for gangue particles by combining Solidworks and Femap. The simulation results showed that kinetics energy of gangue particles is mainly consumed by the collision between particles and the suspended buffer, while the energy consumed by structural damping of the suspended buffer is relatively small. At the same time, the ratio of energy consumed by particle collision decreases with the increase of gangue particle size, which corresponds to the increasing particle residual kinetic energy. Origin was then employed to fit ratio of energy consumed by collision, particle residual kinetic energy and velocity as functions of particle size: E-1 = 57.19 + 34.48/(1 + e((D-48.89)/7.19)), E-2 = 40.57-33.59/(1 + e((D-49.16)/8.14)) and v' = 52.34-51.93/(1 + e((D-50.50)/18.75)). Based on the requirement of particle kinetic energy transformation, the reasonable particle size was determined to below 50 mm according to the aforementioned functional relationships. Industrial testing of the simulation result was performed in the Dongping coal mine, which showed good buffering effect while damage of the storage silo was not observed. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.