Tolerancing algebra: a building block for handling tolerance interactions in design and manufacturing - Part 2: Tolerance interaction

Part 1 of two companion papers was concerned with the elementary concepts for tolerancing algebra, such as deviation space, deviation volume and tolerance primitives. Part 2 deals with the interactions between those primitives. The tolerance transfer problem is discussed first to figure out the relationship between the the process planning decisions and the tolerances. Then the manufacturing process dispersions are modelled in a deviation space so that they can be handled with the tolerance primitives on a common basis. As a means of describing the interactions between the deviation primitives either tolerances or process dispersions, or both four basic tolerancing operations are defined: composition, decomposition, transfer, and aggregation. An example is presented to illustrate how the proposed algebra can be used for various types of tolerance interactions.