A Data-Driven Methodology to Improve Tolerance Allocation Using Product Usage Data

2021 ◽  
Vol 143 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kangjie Li ◽  
Yicong Gao ◽  
Hao Zheng ◽  
Jianrongg Tan

Abstract Industry 4.0, the fourth industrial revolution, puts forward new requirements for the sustainable service of products. With the recent advances in measurement technologies, global and local deformations in inaccessible areas can be monitored. Product usage data such as geometric deviation, position deviation, and angular deviation that lead to product functional performance degradation can be continuously collected during the product usage stage. These technologies provide opportunities to improve tolerance design by improving tolerance allocation using product usage data. The challenge lies in how to assess these deviations for identifying relevant field factors and reallocate the tolerance value. In this paper, a data-driven methodology based on the deviation for tolerance analysis is proposed to improve the tolerance allocation. A feature graph of a mechanical assembly is established based on the assembly relationship. The node representation in the feature graph is defined based on the unified Jacobian-torsor model and the node label is calculated by a synthetic evaluation method. A novel hierarchical graph attention networks (HGAT) is proposed to investigate hidden relations between nodes in the feature graph and calculate labels of all nodes. A modification necessity index (MNI) is defined for each tolerance between two nodes based on their labels. An identification of the to-be-modified tolerance method is proposed to specify the tolerance analysis target. A deviation difference matrix is constructed to calculate the MNI of each tolerance for identifying the to-be-modified tolerance value with high priorities for product improvement. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology is demonstrated through a case study for improving tolerance allocation of a press machine.

Author(s):  
Kemper Lewis ◽  
Dave Van Horn

A growing area of research in the engineering community is the use of data and analytics for transforming information into knowledge to design better systems, products, and processes. Data-driven decisions can be made in the early, middle, and late stages in a design process where customer needs are identified and understood, a final concept for a design is chosen, and usage data from the deployed product is captured, respectively. Design Analytics (DA) is a paradigm for improving the core information-to-knowledge transformations in these stages of a design process resulting in better performing and functioning products that reflect both explicit and implicit customer needs. In this paper, a simulator is used to model usage of a hypothetical refrigerator and generate artificial data driven by four different customer behavior profiles with variation. The population of customers is randomly divided among the four behavior profiles so that the underlying customer preferences are unknown to the experimenter prior to data analysis. The purpose of the simulation is to illustrate the use of DA in the late stage of a design process to improve the transition from an existing product to the next generation product. Metrics are developed to analyze the product usage data, and both prevailing and subtle usage trends are identified. After conclusions are made, the study proceeds to the early and middle stages of a subsequent design process where a hypothetical next-generation refrigerator is conceptualized.


Author(s):  
Hua Wang ◽  
Jialei Zhang ◽  
Junyang Yu

Abstract Pneumatic percussive riveting is an important way to join the sheet metals. In order to ensure the load transfer and the fatigue performance of riveted joint, the interference of the rivet/hole is strictly specified. The interference of the rivet/hole is highly correlated with the process capability of the pneumatic hammer and the diameter of the pre-hole. It is a critical step to choose the appropriate pneumatic hammer to ensure the interference requirements. Energy per blow of the pneumatic hammer is a proclaimed parameter from the riveting hammer manufacturer. It is difficult for the designer to choose the riveting hammer in practical riveting scheme based on energy per blow. Tolerance analysis is an efficient way to model the manufacturing variation and implement process control. This paper presents the tolerance allocation of the pneumatic percussive riveting based on the process capability of the pneumatic hammer. In order to obtain the designed interferences of the rivet/hole, a tolerance chain is built with the process capability of the pneumatic hammer, the diameter of the pre-hole and the diameter of the rivet shank. The process capability of the pneumatic hammer is represented with the interferences of the rivet/hole after riveting. It is an intuitive parameter for the designer to choose the riveting hammer in practical riveting scheme. The process capability of the pneumatic hammer is obtained from the designed riveting experiments with the pneumatic percussive riveting platform. The diameter of the pre-hole affects the interference of the rivet/hole also. The tolerance for manual hole-drilling should be determined to assure the interference requirements and high drilling operation efficiency simultaneously. The variation of the pre-hole is obtained from the manual drilling experiments and diameter measurements. Different hole-drilling results in different mating conditions between the pre-hole and the rivet. The fit conditions of different pre-holes are modeled and the final interferences after riveting are analyzed. Worst case method and statistical analysis method are two common methods for tolerance analysis. For the manual hole-drilling and the pneumatic percussive riveting, worst case method is employed to analyze the constructed tolerance chain in order to accomplish the interferences of the rivet/hole. The different analyzed dimensions, rivet-hole clearances and pre-hole drilling variation, are investigated respectively. The reported work enhances the understanding of the tolerance allocation for the pneumatic percussive riveting. The interference based process capability of the pneumatic hammer provides good reference for pneumatic hammer choosing in riveting scheme. The reported tolerance chain of the interference could be used for the tolerance determination of manual hole-drilling with good quality and high efficiency.


Author(s):  
Zhao Ming ◽  
Hou Zhongsheng ◽  
Yan Jingwen ◽  
Li Yongqiang

Author(s):  
Edoh Goka ◽  
Lazhar Homri ◽  
Pierre Beaurepaire ◽  
Jean-Yves Dantan

Tolerance analysis aims toward the verification impact of the individual tolerances on the assembly and functional requirements of a mechanism. The manufactured products have several types of contact and are inherent in imperfections, which often causes the failure of the assembly and its functioning. Tolerances are, therefore, allocated to each part of the mechanism in purpose to obtain an optimal quality of the final product. Three main issues are generally defined to realize the tolerance analysis of a mechanical assembly: the geometrical deviations modeling, the geometrical behavior modeling, and the tolerance analysis techniques. In this paper, a method is proposed to realize the tolerance analysis of an over-constrained mechanical assembly with form defects by considering the contacts nature (fixed, sliding, and floating contacts) in its geometrical behavior modeling. Different optimization methods are used to study the different contact types. The overall statistical tolerance analysis of the over-constrained mechanical assembly is carried out by determining the assembly and the functionality probabilities based on optimization techniques combined with a Monte Carlo simulation (MCS). An application to an over-constrained mechanical assembly is given at the end.


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