Def@ShapeCAT: Consideration of part deformations in shape-aware computer-aided tolerancing

由于不可避免的制造误差，在每个制造零件上都会观察到几何偏差。公差分析提供了一种量化工具，能够评估这些几何零件偏差对机械组件功能的影响。它被广泛应用于设计中，以支持公差的功能规范，也可用于生产前和生产阶段，以支持工艺规划活动、公差验证、根本原因分析以及制造和装配工艺优化。由于这一重要性，在过去的几十年里，各种公差分析理论和方法在科学文献中被提出。然而，它们都有严重的内在局限性。针对这一问题，最近提出了一种基于皮肤模型形状的形状感知公差分析框架，该框架克服了已有公差分析方法的重要缺陷，如不符合国际公差标准、未考虑形状偏差等。然而，到目前为止，这种现有的公差分析框架仅限于评估几何偏差对刚性零件的影响，尽管人们承认，这些偏差与热膨胀和零件变形等物理现象造成的进一步偏差相加。为了克服这一缺点，本项目旨在阐述在基于蒙皮模型形状的公差分析中考虑零件变形的新途径和方法。特别是，将探索在公差分析中考虑结构和局部零件变形及其与几何零件偏差的相互关系的新方法。在基于皮肤模型形状的公差分析的原型应用中，还将实现详细的步骤和算法，以演示所开发的方法的适用性。总而言之，计划中的项目将有力地促进对更复杂的计算机辅助公差工具的日益增长的需求，并大大拓宽关于公差理论的科学知识体系。

As a consequence of inevitable manufacturing imprecisions, geometrical deviations are observed on every manufactured part. Tolerance analysis provides a quantitative tool that enables the assessment of the effects of these geometrical part deviations on the function of mechanical assemblies. It is widely used in design to support the functional specification of tolerances, but also in the pre-production and production stages to support process planning activities, the tolerance verification, the root cause analysis, and the manufacturing and assembly process optimization. Due to this importance, various tolerance analysis theories and methods have been proposed in scientific literature within the last decades. However, they all share severe intrinsic limitations. As a response to this, a comprehensive framework for the shape-aware tolerance analysis based on Skin Model Shapes has been developed recently, which overcomes important weaknesses of established tolerance analysis approaches, such as the lacking conformance to international tolerancing standards and the missing consideration of form deviations. However, up to now, this existing tolerance analysis framework is limited to the assessment of the effects of geometrical deviations on rigid parts, while it is acknowledged, that these deviations add up with further deviations caused by physical phenomena, such as thermal expansion and part deformations. To overcome this shortcoming, this project aims at elaborating new approaches and methods for the consideration of part deformations in the tolerance analysis based on Skin Model Shapes. Particularly, new methods for the consideration of structural and local part deformations and their interrelationships with geometrical part deviations in the tolerance analysis will be explored. The elaborated procedures and algorithms will also be implemented in a prototype application for the tolerance analysis based on Skin Model Shapes to demonstrate the applicability of the developed methods. In summary, the planned project will hence strongly contribute to the growing demand for more sophisticated computer-aided tolerancing tools and considerably broaden the scientific body of knowledge regarding tolerancing theories.