Tolerance specification of the plane feature based on the axiomatic design

Abstract

Tolerance specification involves selecting tolerance types for functional or assembly features to control the variation of features. General methods tend to formulate a frame to specify all the features of part, while the specification methods or reasoning rules for specific feature (point, line, plane, cylinder, etc.) are less studied. This paper focuses on the tolerance-type selection of the plane feature. The theory of axiomatic design is introduced to select the tolerance type for the plane feature, and the problem is interpreted as a redundant decoupled design. To achieve the functional requirements, design parameters and constraints of physics domain are determined. The mapping rules, which are between design parameters and functional requirements, are generated based on the independent axiom. Considering the large number of solutions of the design, the constraints such as cost and inspection methods are introduced to reduce the number of solutions. The minimum information axiom is introduced for the optimum mapping rules and the tolerance types are selected by the optimum mapping rules for the plane feature. Finally, the specification process is concluded and demonstrated by means of an example.