Modularized Design of ACDCD: An Improved Spectral Clustering-Based Approach

The air curtain dust control device (ACDCD) utilizes the air curtain formed by high-speed gas ejected from an injection cavity to separate the driver working area from the roadheader pollution area, so as to achieve the purpose of dust control. The existing ACDCDs are customized for various roadheaders and various production conditions, which are not flexible enough and are difficult to industrialize. Meanwhile, the existing ACDCD has drawbacks such as its costly maintenance, difficulty in replacement of the core parts, and costly iterative design of products. Due to the growing resource demand and sustainable development needs, the ACDCD should be designed considering the full life cycle technology of the product. In this paper, we proposed a modular method of the ACDCD based on improved spectral cluster module division and proposed an improved air curtain dust control device (IACDCD). Specifically, a similarity matrix construction method considering the functional and structural correlation matrix of components was proposed to strengthen the connection relationship of components. Two existing ACDCDs and the IACDCD were modularized using the improved spectral cluster module division method. The results showed that the improved spectral clustering module division method could effectively improve the clustering effect. The results of the module division of the three ACDCDs proved that the IACDCD could effectively increase the replaceability and maintenance of the injection cavity, and then reduce the maintenance cost and iterative design cost of the ACDCD.