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In a mechanical assembly, errors arising from part manufacturing or assembly process may cause significant variation in final assembly with respect to the ideal model and affect the quality and performance of product. In sheet metal products due to high order of compliancy of components, errors generated during assembly process are as important as parts’ manufacturing tolerances. Therefore, it is crucial to have a comprehensive model in order to analyze the assembly process of these structures and represent the relationship between part tolerances and final assembly errors. However, it should be noted that assembly processes are often complex and nonlinear in nature. In sheet metal structures, the most important factor that makes the assembly process nonlinear is contact interaction between mating parts during assembly. If this factor is disregarded and the assembly process is only represented based on linear force-displacement relationship, the model will result in part penetration and a remarkable difference between theoretical and experimental results will occur. Another important feature in sheet metal tolerance analysis is the surface continuity of components which makes the deformation of the neighboring points of a plate correlated. This paper aims to present a new methodology for tolerance analysis of compliant sheet metal assemblies in which a nonlinear finite element analysis is integrated with improved sensitivity-free probability analysis in order to account ...

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The appearance quality of automotive bodies is among the features which are, in recent years, significantly taken into consideration by designers throughout the world. Automotive bodies are, to a great extent, constructed from flexible sheet metal components and would deform and distorted easily by even a slight assembly force. Therefore, errors due to manufacture and assembly processes of automotive bodies lead to major deviation from the ideal product and finally affect the appearance quality and cosmetic features of the vehicle. The effect of these errors, which are commonly arisen by dimensional, geometric or assembly tolerance of the components, can be examined by tolerance analysis. As one of the key quality characteristics in vehicle design, this paper evaluates the appearance quality of automotive bodies as a function of assembly derived errors. In the proposed methodology, by means of the nonlinear finite element analysis and by presenting the surface interrogation techniques, a comprehensive approach of quality appearance evaluation of vehicles is developed. The approach is validated by a vehicle example and the results show a great consistence with practical data obtained from the production line.

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Because of increasing demands for using of rotating systems in high accuracy and high speed applications, in addition of specific condition of rotating systems, it is necessary to analyze these rotating systems characteristics. Tolerance analysis is a useful tool for estimating effects of dimensional and geometrical errors of effective parameters on functional characteristics in a mechanical system. Unlike other mechanical systems, in addition to the dimensional and geometrical errors, the accuracy of the rotary systems performance directly depend on the flexibility of parts and Non Repetitive Run-Out (NRRO) errors. In this paper, a new method is proposed for static and dynamic tolerance analysis of the rotary systems with the dimensional and geometrical errors, the flexibility effects, and the NRRO errors based on the tolerance zone model. First, using the small degrees of freedom concept, the dimensional and geometrical errors and the NRRO error are modeled in the tolerance zone. Then, based on a new strategy, the performance -assembly functions of the system for modeling the error propagation of the rotary system in the static and dynamic conditions are extracted. Then, using the proposed equations, sensitivities of the requirements such as the end of shaft position and the main natural frequency to tolerances are computed. To illustrate applicability of the proposed method, a rotary system is considered as a case study. Monte Carlo simulations are used for validation of the computational results from proposed method.

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Tolerance analysis plays a crucial role in predicting the quality of products and reducing production costs. This procedure is generally complex and available methods for analyzing different types of assemblies are not always applicable. Accordingly, having a comprehensive approach to assess the effect of tolerances on the quality and cost of products is a fundamental requirement in the manufacturing industry. This paper proposes the improved second-order method for tolerance analysis of complex assemblies. The conventional second-order tolerance analysis (SOTA) is an accurate and applicable method for obtaining the statistical specifications of the assembly’s key characteristic. However, determining the assembly function in SOTA entails forming vector loops and therefore, this method is limited to simple assemblies. On the other hand, in mechanical assemblies that are usually complex, creating vector loop may encounter some difficulties in practice. In this study, the mentioned issues have been overcome by linking SolidWorks and MATLAB software to employ the proposed methodology for any mechanical assemblies without creating vector loops. For this purpose, MATLAB software makes necessary changes in the SolidWorks model and calculates the derivatives of the assembly function, which are required for the analysis. Then, the statistical moments are computed and the probability distribution of the key characteristic is obtained using the Pearson system. The present study is appropriate for analyzing either linear or nonlinear assembly functions with any statistical distribution. Finally, the applicability of the proposed approach is investigated by some practical examples and the accuracy of results is confirmed by Monte Carlo simulation.

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