Concurrent design and process tolerances determination in consideration of geometrical tolerances

Abstract

Concurrent design and process tolerances determination may ensure the manufacturability of products, improve the design efficiency, lower the overall production cost, reduce the quantity of unqualified products, and shorten product development cycle. Yet most of the current concurrent tolerancing models focus on the concurrent design of dimensional tolerances without taking into consideration geometrical tolerances. The objective of this study is to extend the concurrent tolerancing model to consider geometrical tolerance requirements. Firstly, the geometrical tolerances are either converted into equivalent dimensional tolerances or only treated as additional machining constraints based on their respective characteristics. Then, a concurrent tolerancing model is established based on ensuring the fulfillment of the product's functional requirements, taking the combination of expected quality loss and manufacturing cost as target function, and taking the functional constraints, geometrical tolerance constraints and process bound constraints as the constraint conditions. After having established the concurrent tolerancing model, the nonlinear programming technique is employed to solve this model to gain the optimal design and process tolerances. Finally, an example of wheel assembly is given to illustrate the validity of the suggested method.