Tolerance analysis of flexible assemblies with contact effects based on modified influence coefficients method

In sheet metal structures, due to high flexibility of the sheets, the dimensional and geometrical errors do considerably influence the assembly tolerances. 4n one hand, various stages of design, manufacturing and assembly of mechanical sets are involved in various factors such as dimensional, geometrical and material uncertainties. As a result, presenting a comprehensive model based on which propagation of the changes resulted from the uncertainties of the manufacturing processes and their relations with assembly tolerances could be approximated with a high accuracy seems necessary. In normal influence coefficients method, neglecting the contact effects between the components not only causes the diffusion of contact surfaces, but also leads to errors in predicting assembly tolerances. In this paper, an applicative method for tolerance analysis of flexible sheet structures and precise prediction of abundant errors in assembly characteristics is presented by modifying the influence coefficients method and by considering the effects of components’ contacts using finite element method (FEM). To do so, a proper strategy based on modeling and the analysis of effective uncertainties in the process of the assembly of the sets with flexible components has been proposed. At the end, the capabilities of the proposed method are investigated by presenting an example and the accuracy of the obtained results has been compared with Monte Carlo and experimental results.