Indexed by:Journal Article

Date of Publication:2005-10-01

Journal:ENGINEERING OPTIMIZATION

Included Journals:Scopus、EI、SCIE

Volume:37

Issue:7

Page Number:717-732

ISSN:0305-215X

Key Words:tolerance synthesis; system reliability-based design; sequential approximate programming; first-order reliability method; product of conditional marginals

Abstract:The performance-cost ratio of a product may be significantly improved by a better tolerance assignment. Current practice guided by experience usually leads to a conservative and costly design. Because yield in mechanical engineering is analogous to system reliability in structural engineering, this article applies a system reliability-based optimization formulation to tolerance synthesis and presents a sequential approximate programming method. This method is an extension of the approach for the optimization with component reliability constraints. Two often-quoted examples are analyzed in detail to illustrate its effectiveness and a strategy for tolerance assignment is recommended.