• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.21 no.9
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• pp.78-84
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• 2022

An air circuit breaker (ACB) is an electrical protection device that interrupts abnormal fault currents that result from overloads or short circuits in a low-voltage power distribution line. The ACB consists of a main circuit part for current flow, mechanism part for the opening and closing operation of movable conductors, and arc-extinguishing part for arc extinction during the breaking operation. The driving mechanism of the ACB is a spring energy charging type. The faster the contact opening speed of the movable conductors during the opening process, the better the breaking performance. However, there is a disadvantage that the durability of mechanism decreases in inverse proportion to the use of a spring capable of accumulating high energy to configure the breaking speed faster. Therefore, to simultaneously satisfy the breaking performance and mechanical endurance of the ACB, its driving mechanism must be optimized. In this study, a dynamic model of the ACB was developed using the MDO(Mechanism Dynamics Option) module of CREO, which is widely used in multibody dynamics analysis. To improve the opening velocity, the Taguchi design method was applied to optimize the design parameters of an ACB with many linkages. In addition, to evaluate the improvement in the operating characteristics, the simulation and experimental results were compared with the MDO model and improved prototype sample, respectively.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.311-319
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• 2017

The primary suspension system of a railway vehicle restrains the wheelset and the bogie, which greatly affects the dynamic characteristics of the vehicle depending on the stiffness in each direction. In order to improve the dynamic characteristics, different stiffness in each direction is required. However, designing different stiffness in each direction is difficult in the case of a general suspension device. To address this, in this paper, an optimization technique is applied to design different stiffness in each direction by using a conical rubber spring. The optimization is performed by using target and analysis RMS values. Lastly, the final model is proposed by complementing the shape of the weak part of the model. An actual model is developed and the reliability of the optimization model is proved on the basis of a deviation average of about 7.7% compared to the target stiffness through a static load test. In addition, the stiffness value is applied to a multibody dynamics model to analyze the stability and curve performance. The critical speed of the improved model was 190km/h, which was faster than the maximum speed of 110km/h. In addition, the steering performance is improved by 34% compared with the conventional model.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.36 no.12
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• pp.1683-1688
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• 2012

Topology optimization is applied for the lightweight design of three main parts of a vertical articulated robot: a base frame, a lower and a upper frame. Design domains for optimization are set as large solid regions that completely embrace the original parts, which are discretized by using three-dimensional solid elements. Design variables are parameterized one-to-one to the material properties of each element by using the SIMP method. The objective of optimization is set as the multi-objective form combining the natural frequencies and mean compliances of a structure for which load steps of interest are selected from the multibody dynamics analysis of a robot. The obtained results of topology optimization are post-processed to designs favorable to manufacturability for casting process. The final optimized results are 11.0% (base frame), 12.0% (lower frame) and 10.0% (upper frame) lighter with similar or even higher static and dynamic stiffnesses than the original models.