Tolerance Analysis of Mechanical Assemblies with Asymmetric Tolerances

This paper presents modified relations for worst-case and root-sum-square (RSS) tolerance accumulation models for tolerance analysis of mechanical assemblies with asymmetric tolerances. The common models do not consider the sign of the sensitivity factors and thus are applicable to symmetric tolerances only. Using the new models, the accumulation of asymmetric tolerances results in asymmetric assembly tolerances. New relationships for estimation of percent contributions of individual tolerances are also introduced which yield percent contributions of upper and lower bounds of independent variables (manufacturing dimensions) on the upper and lower bounds of dependent variables (assembly dimensions). The modified methods and new relations are applied to linear and nonlinear examples and their results are discussed.