Counter-Measures for Relay Failures due to Dynamic Welding: A Robust Engineering Design

A fundamental idea has emerged from the study of the work of Genichi Taguchi in off-line quality control. A product should be designed so that it is robust against variations in the manufacturing process and the environment in which it is used. But the idea is not entirely new. It appears in various forms in the vogues and syntax of modern engineering design. Thus we have ‘design to product’, ‘design for manufacture’, ‘conceptual design and innovation’, ‘systematic methodologies’ and so forth. It is the ability to describe robustness in statistical terms that ought to create a change in design thinking. But for this to happen professionals on both sides need to understand each other’s language. The paper attempts to bridge the gap by drawing heavily on the language of engineering design and giving recent examples of product design where both modes of thinking have benefited from each other.

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MODELING STATISTICAL UNCERTAINTIES IN ROBUST ENGINEERING DESIGN

Transactions of the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering ◽

10.1139/tcsme-2001-0017 ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 25 (3-4) ◽

pp. 297-313

Author(s):

Li Chen ◽

Eric L. Mulkay ◽

S.S. Rao

Keyword(s):

Engineering Design ◽

Robust Engineering Design

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The Synthesis of Spherical Motion Generators in the Presence of an Incomplete Set of Attitudes

Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics ◽

10.1115/1.4025297 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 6 (3) ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Khalid Al-Widyan ◽

Jorge Angeles

Keyword(s):

Rigid Body ◽

Engineering Design ◽

Theoretical Framework ◽

General Methodology ◽

Four Bar Linkage ◽

Robust Engineering Design ◽

Guidance Problem ◽

Spherical Motion ◽

Spherical Rigid Body ◽

Selection Of

Proposed in this paper is a general methodology applicable to the synthesis of spherical motion generators in the presence of an incomplete set of finitely separated attitudes. The spherical rigid-body guidance problem in the realm of four-bar linkage synthesis can be solved exactly for up to five prescribed attitudes of the coupler link, and hence, any number of attitudes smaller than five is considered incomplete in this paper. The attitudes completing the set are determined to produce a linkage whose performance is robust against variations in the unprescribed attitudes. Robustness is needed in this context to overcome the presence of uncertainty due to the selection of the unspecified attitudes, that many a time are specified implicitly by the designer upon choosing, for example, the location of the fixed joints of the dyads. A theoretical framework for model-based robust engineering design is thus, recalled, and a methodology for the robust synthesis of spherical four-bar linkages is laid down. An example is included here to concretize the concepts and illustrate the application of the proposed methodology.

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