An Improved Simplex Search based Quality Control Method for Medium Voltage Insulators

For the production of medium-voltage insulators, the main technological parameters of the production settings have a significant impact on product quality. Determination of the optimal production process parameters, therefore, can effectively improve the quality of medium voltage insulators. In the industrial scene, engineers usually use the trial-and-error method and the design of experiments (DOE) method. Both of the methods, however, have significant deficiencies, such as cumbersome and time-consuming. To improve the efficiency of quality control for medium voltage insulators, a revised simplex search method, based on historical simplexes information, was proposed. By integrating the knowledge of the historical reflection points of the simplexes, the reflection point of each simplex can be reformulated differently from the traditional simplex search method. Due to this modification, the search directions of the simplex search method at each iteration can be more accurate to follow the descend directions. Thus the efficiency of the method can be improved. The efficacy and efficiency of the revised method have been verified on the quality control of a particular type of pillar insulators.