Elastic screen surfaces are widely used for classification of moist steam coal. In this study, a novel rigid-flexible coupled elastic screen surface was proposed, and its motion characteristics were investigated. Furthermore, the effect of excitation parameters on classification performance was analyzed. The results showed that the acceleration of the flexible elastic screen surface were markedly larger than those of the screen box due to the large deformation. The y-axis acceleration amplitudes of the elastic screen surface were about 150% higher than those of screen box, and showed a more pronounced increase during the feeding process, but decreased during the stable state compared to the no-load condition. With increasing total excitation force and frequency, the accelerations increased, the screening efficiency increased first and then decreased, while total misplaced materials changed in the opposite direction. The maximum screening efficiency of 83.15%, indicating the satisfactory classification performance for moist coal. (C) 2019 The Society of Powder Technology Japan. Published by Elsevier B.V.