A Global Optimization Approach to Select Design and Manufacturing Tolerances of a Mechanical Assembly

The allocation of dimensional tolerances directly influences the manufacturing cost and functionality, of a product. The present work reports on a procedure to allocate both design and manufacturing tolerances based on the minimum total manufacturing cost of an assembly The optimization model for tolerance design is a non-linear multivariable problem with multiple constraints. Since such problem may have a noisy surface, there is a need to apply an efficient global optimization technique. In the present work, Scatter search, one of the recently emerged optimization techniques in the area of metaheuristics, is applied successfully to determine the optimal tolerances. An example is taken from the literature to explain the proposed methodology.