Assembly design in aeronautic field: From assembly jigs to tolerance analysis

Author(s):  
Andrea Corrado ◽  
Wilma Polini

Tolerance analysis represents the best way to solve assembly problems in order to improve the quality and to reduce the costs. It is a critical step to design and to build a product such as an aircraft and its importance is grown up in the past years. This work presents a method for the tolerance analysis of an assembly involving free-form surfaces with large dimensions. The assembly is a tail beam, a structural component of an aircraft that is constituted by five parts of large dimensions. The influence of the tolerances applied to the five components of the tail beam on the value of the gap at the interfaces among the parts has been deeply investigated. A set of control points have been distributed on the free-form surfaces of the tail beam; its number and its distribution have been opportunely designed. Moreover, the influence of the tolerances on the other requirements of the tail beam connected with the motion drive has been studied. Tolerance analysis has involved the choice of the assembly tools and sequence too. The assembly jigs are mated with the assembly components through pins that are inserted into tooling holes located on the assembly components. The fit conditions have been modeled and the tolerances of the tooling hole have been opportunely chosen. Each tolerance of the tail beam components has been modeled by means of a probability density function. Monte Carlo approach has been used to obtain the statistical distribution of the assembly requirements, once dimensions and geometry of the tail beam components have been perturbed inside the tolerance ranges. Monte Carlo simulation has been carried out by a well-known computer-aided tolerance software, eM-Tolmate of UGS®.

1997 ◽  
Vol 119 (3) ◽  
pp. 368-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Charles Liu ◽  
S. Jack Hu

Traditional variation analysis methods, such as Root Sum Square method and Monte Carlo simulation, are not applicable to sheet metal assemblies because of possible part deformation during the assembly process. This paper proposes the use of finite element methods (FEM) in developing mechanistic variation simulation models for deformable sheet metal parts with complex two or three dimensional free form surfaces. Mechanistic variation simulation provides improved analysis by combining engineering structure models and statistical analysis in predicting the assembly variation. Direct Monte Carlo simulation in FEM is very time consuming, because hundreds or thousands of FEM runs are required to obtain a realistic assembly distribution. An alternative method, based on the Method of Influence Coefficients, is developed to improve the computational efficiency, producing improvements by several orders of magnitude. Simulations from both methods yield almost identical results. An example illustrates the developed methods used for evaluating sheet metal assembly variation. The new approaches provide an improved understanding of sheet metal assembly processes.


Author(s):  
D Brujic ◽  
M Ristic

Accurate dimensional inspection and error analysis of free-form surfaces requires accurate registration of the component in hand. Registration of surfaces defined as non-uniform rational B-splines (NURBS) has been realized through an implementation of the iterative closest point method (ICP). The paper presents performance analysis of the ICP registration method using Monte Carlo simulation. A large number of simulations were performed on an example of a precision engineering component, an aero-engine turbine blade, which was judged to possess a useful combination of geometric characteristics such that the results of the analysis had generic significance. Data sets were obtained through CAD (computer aided design)-based inspection. Confidence intervals for estimated transformation parameters, maximum error between a measured point and the nominal surface (which is extremely important for inspection) mean error and several other performance criteria are presented. The influence of shape, number of measured points, measurement noise and some less obvious, but not less important, factors affecting confidence intervals are identified through statistical analysis.


2003 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhengshu Shen

This paper presents a brief review of a leading commercial computer-aided tolerance (CAT) analysis system, VisVSA, which is available from EDS/Unigraphics. VisVSA facilitates statistical analysis of dimensional variations in parts and assemblies, based on Monte Carlo simulation. Tolerance specific entities and attributes are interactively extracted from CAD models. Feature attributes are varied within the specified tolerance range, and user-defined statistical distributions are used in simulation runs to determine the contributors, the extent of contributions, sensitivities, and statistical distribution of the analyzed part dimension or assembly clearance/interference. VisVSA represents the state-of-the-art in tolerance analysis, but the technology itself needs further advancement.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Soroosh Tayebi Arasteh ◽  
Adam Kalisz

AbstractSplines are one of the main methods of mathematically representing complicated shapes, which have become the primary technique in the fields of Computer Graphics (CG) and Computer-Aided Geometric Design (CAGD) for modeling complex surfaces. Among all, Bézier and Catmull–Rom splines are the most common in the sub-fields of engineering. In this paper, we focus on conversion between cubic Bézier and Catmull–Rom curve segments, rather than going through their properties. By deriving the conversion equations, we aim at converting the original set of the control points of either of the Catmull–Rom or Bézier cubic curves to a new set of control points, which corresponds to approximately the same shape as the original curve, when considered as the set of the control points of the other curve. Due to providing simple linear transformations of control points, the method is very simple, efficient, and easy to implement, which is further validated in this paper using some numerical and visual examples.


2008 ◽  
Vol 23 (26) ◽  
pp. 4337-4343 ◽  
Author(s):  
FENG-GE TIAN ◽  
GANG CHEN ◽  
HUI-LING WEI

The hardness properties of quark- and gluon-jets produced by different flavor quarks are compared in 3-jet events of e+e- collision generated with Monte Carlo Simulation Jetset 7.4 generator at [Formula: see text]. The 3-jet events are obtained using the Durham algorithm and the quark- and gluon-jets are identified by angular-method. The average values of transverse momentum 〈pt〉, multiplicity 〈N〉 and rapidity 〈y〉 versus hardness for quark- and gluon-jets of different flavors are compared. It turns out that the distributions of 〈pt〉, 〈N〉 and 〈y〉 versus hardness of quark-jets are different to their flavors, while those of the gluon-jets are insensitive to the flavors. On the other hand, the 〈pt〉 and 〈N〉 of quark- and gluon-jets are strong positive correlated with hardness, but the 〈y〉 of those are negatively correlated with hardness.


2021 ◽  
Vol 111 (11-12) ◽  
pp. 797-802
Author(s):  
Leonhard Alexander Meijer ◽  
Torben Merhofe ◽  
Timo Platt ◽  
Dirk Biermann

In diesem Beitrag wird ein neuer Ansatz zum Erstellen von Maschinenprogrammen zur mikrofrästechnischen Oberflächenstrukturierung vorgestellt und die Anwendung der Prozesskette für ein komplexes, industrielles Verzahnungswerkzeug beschrieben. Durch die Reduzierung des Berechnungsaufwandes in der CAD/CAM (Computer-aided Design & Manufacturing)-Umgebung können die Limitierungen konventioneller Softwarelösungen umgangen und Bearbeitungsprogramme für komplexe Strukturierungsaufgaben effizient erstellt werden.   A new method for generating machine programs for micromilling surface structuring is presented, and the application of the process chain to a complex, industrial gearing die is described. By reducing the computational effort in the CAD/CAM (Computer-aided Design & Manufacturing) environment, the problems of conventional software solutions can be avoided and complex machining programs can be created.


Author(s):  
T. Wong ◽  
S. T. Tan ◽  
W. S. Sze

Abstract The parting line on a product affects the final layout of the mould blocks and hence the manufacturing efficiency. The increased usage of free-form surfaces in product design increases the burden of computer aided parting line and parting surface determination. Previous proposed algorithms may not be sufficient to deal with such situation since most of them were originally designed to deal with products having planar surfaces or simple curved surfaces. A new algorithm is proposed to deal with such situation. The algorithm adopted a recursive uneven slicing on a trimmed surface model. The method provides a quick and efficient way of locating the parting line of a product.


Author(s):  
Jinsong Gao ◽  
Kenneth W. Chase ◽  
Spencer P. Magleby

Abstract Two methods for performing statistical tolerance analysis of mechanical assemblies are compared: the Direct Linearization Method (DLM), and Monte Carlo simulation. A selection of 2-D and 3-D vector models of assemblies were analyzed, including problems with closed loop assembly constraints. Closed vector loops describe the small kinematic adjustments that occur at assembly time. Open loops describe critical clearances or other assembly features. The DLM uses linearized assembly constraints and matrix algebra to estimate the variations of the assembly or kinematic variables, and to predict assembly rejects. A modified Monte Carlo simulation, employing an iterative technique for closed loop assemblies, was applied to the same problem set. The results of the comparison show that the DLM is accurate if the tolerances are relatively small compared to the nominal dimensions of the components, and the assembly functions are not highly nonlinear. Sample size is shown to have great influence on the accuracy of Monte Carlo simulation.


2014 ◽  
Vol 548-549 ◽  
pp. 1646-1650 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yang Liu ◽  
Yan Li

It has been proved that the construction schedule management was an uncertain problem. Traditional CPM method was a good way to define the total duration and critical paths but can not solve uncertainty. The paper use CPM to define the duration and critical path firstly, then defined the parameters with Delphi and make Monte Carlo simulation. Through simulation results, it is found that the probability to finish the work on time was only 35.3%. The following step is to make sensitivity analysis, through the calculation, the work which has large influence was found and treat as key control points. It is proved that Monte Carlo simulation is useful to solve the problem of construction schedule management.


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