In this paper, the magnetic force actuator (MFA), a new type of actuator, is applied for long stroke driving with simple structure and high reliability. Ansys and Matlab are adopted to study its static and dynamic characteristics and conduct parameter design. The static simulation concludes static magnetic field, end shield material, structure size of permanent magnet and processing deviation of the actuator, which will impact the characteristics of the actuator in varying degrees. Then the state equations describing the dynamic characteristics of MFA are solved by four-order Runge-kutta method and finite-element method. Interactive interface of the APDL-file and M-file and Macrosoft Visual Basic (VB) is designed to combine Ansys and Matlab to realize optimization design of structure parameters, which simplifies the operation methods and enhances the efficiency. The dynamic simulation results show its good work performance compared with the experiment characteristics of practical 40.5kV SF6 circuit breaker with the spring mechanism.