Intelligent Tolerance Allocation for a High Duty Brake

In this paper, a tolerance allocation approach is proposed which attempts to select tolerances for individual dimensional variables of a product in a way that minimizes the cost while maintaining critical design requirements. The algorithm uses a reciprocal power cost-tolerance function which incorporates variable sensitivities computed in a DLM-based tolerance analysis technique. The process capabilities are applied as constraints and the genetic algorithm is used to find the optimum solution. The method is applied to a heavy duty brake problem and its results are presented.