Statistical analysis of geometrical tolerances: A case study

ABSTRACT Tolerancing is one of the most important but complex activities in design. Tolerance information takes place at every phase of design activity. It represents the fundamental link between the theoretical model of the mechanical product and the actual one. During the two previous decades, engineering projects and scientific researches demonstrated that ongoing miniaturization increased the influence of geometric tolerances. They also admit that mass production is mainly based on statistical techniques. On the other hand, the decomposition of the global tolerancing process into functional-level, assembly-level, part-level, and manufacturing-level, reduces dramatically the domain of the solution. In this paper, the global tolerancing process is described and a novel method for statistical analysis of geometrical tolerances is discussed. Then the statistical approach is introduced and its performance is evaluated on a best case study. The analysis of the technical drawing of a part is given in order t...