A statistical approach for robust tolerance design

Abstract

Within an industrial manufacturing process, tolerancing is a key player. The dimensions uncertainties management starts during the design phase, with an assessment on variability of parts not yet produced. For one assembly step, we can gain knowledge from the tolerance range required for the parts involved. In order to assess output uncertainty of this assembly in a reliable way, this paper presents an approach based on the deviation of the sum of uniform distributions. As traditional approaches based on Hoeffding inequalities do not give accurate results when the deviation considered is small, we propose an improved upper bound. We then discuss how the stack chain geometry impacts the bound definition. Finally, we show an application of the proposed approach in tolerance design of an aircraft sub-assembly. The main interest of the technique compared to existing methodologies is the management of the confidence level and the emphasis of the explicit role of the balance within the stack chain.