Multiphysical tolerance analysis – Assessment technique of the impact of the model parameter imprecision

• Published in: Procedia CIRP Vol. 92; pp. 206 - 211
• Main Authors: Dantan, Jean-Yves, Eifler, Tobias, Homri, Lazhar
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 2020; ELSEVIER
• Subjects: Engineering Sciences; Tolerance analysis; Tolerancing; Uncertainty propagation; Tolerance analysis; Uncertainty propagation; Tolerancing
• ISSN: 2212-8271; 2212-8271
• DOI: 10.1016/j.procir.2020.05.192

Tolerance analysis is a well-accepted key element in industry for ensuring product quality as well as for reducing manufacturing costs. At the same time, and particularly in light of the recent advances in simulation technology, tolerancing decisions are also becoming increasingly important during earlier stages of design. One critical task hereby is the simulation of the “real-world” behavior of the product with minimum uncertainty, i.e. the calculation how geometrical deviations impact the mechanical behavior and/or multiple simultaneous physical phenomena in a multiphysical system. Given the short iterations in design, this usually represents a compromise between two contradictory requirements: an acceptable computation time and the accuracy of the results. The presented paper addresses this challenge by presenting a framework to assess the impact of model parameter uncertainty of the multiphysical system behavior on the accuracy of the results. The framework integrates evidence and probability theories to propagate geometrical variability and model imprecision for tolerance analysis. The information regarding geometrical variability is modelled using probability distributions; and the information regarding the model imprecision is more faithfully modelled using families of probability distributions encoded by probability-boxes (upper & lower cumulative distribution functions). Monte Carlo simulation is used for probabilistic analysis while nonlinear optimization is used for interval analysis.