Optimal design of an electro-pneumatic automatic transfer system

This paper presents a method of optimal design of an automatic transfer system which is controlled by the electro-pneumatic servo scheme. The electro-pneumatic automatic transfer system can move parts to desired points or displace defective parts. The dynamic performance of the system can be examined by observing the behavior of the output. The output of the servo control system is the motion of the cylinder, pneumatic actuator. The dynamic performance of the cylinder is governed by the parameters of the components of the entire system. The optimal design can be accomplished by selecting of the parameters such that the desired dynamic performance of the cylinder is obtained. The optimal set of parameters might be obtained through the repeated simulations. Repeated simulations, however, is not effective to determine the optimal set of parameters since the set of parameters is large. This paper presents modeling, application of an optimization method, and the numerical results. The optimization algorithm utilizes the concept of the conjugate gradient method. The results show that the suggested optimization scheme can render faster convergence of iteration compared to other method based on an algebraic optimization method and can reduce the design efforts.