Theoretical and experimental investigation on optimization of a non-contact air conveyor

Air film conveyors equipped with porous pads have been developed to bring the liquid crystal display (LCD) into a non-contact state during transportation process. In this work, a theoretical model including flow property of porous media and Reynolds equation is established within a representative region in order to optimize the design parameters of a partial porous air conveyor. With the theoretical model, an optimization method using nondominated sorting genetic algorithm-II (NSGA-II) is applied for a two-objective optimization to achieve a minimum air consumption and maximum load capacity. Three Pareto-optimal solutions are selected to analyze the influence of each parameter on the characteristics of the air conveyor, and the results indicate that the position of the porous pads has the most significant impact on the performance and of course must be determined with care. Furthermore, experimental results in terms of the supporting force versus gap clearance show that the optimized air conveyor can greatly improve the load capacity over the normal one, indicating that the optimization method is applicable for practical use.