Robust Design of Air Compressor-Driving Quadratic Linear Actuator in Fuel Cell BOP System using Taguchi Method

The linear actuator has the inherent drawback of air gap variation because its linear motion is usually guided by the springs, which destabilizes the dynamic performance. In order to design the linear actuator to be insensitive to air gap, this paper describes the robust design of the air compressor driving linear actuator using Taguchi method. The orthogonal arrays are constructed with selected control factors and noise factor for minimum experiment. The control factors are thickness of inner magnet, height of upper yoke, thickness of outer magnet and thickness of lower yoke while noise factor is airgap. The finite element analysis using commercial electromagnetic analysis program "MAXWELL" are performed instead of experiment. ANOVA are performed to investigate the effects of design factors. In result, the optimal robust linear actuator which is insensitive to air gap variation is designed.