Variation Analysis of Compliant Parts in Composite Material Joined by Adhesive: A Numerical Tool

Tolerance analysis defines a procedure to estimate the resultant variation of the assembly geometry, given the tolerances associated with individual components and the functional relationship between the individual components and the assembly requirements. This aspect is particularly relevant when parts made of composite material are considered, since the research emphasis to date was on the design and fabrication of composite parts, with considerably less attention to quality issues in their subsequent assembly. This work presents a numerical tool to solve the tolerance analysis of assemblies made of compliant parts in composite material; it estimates the geometric deviations of an assembly due to the compliance of the material, the geometrical deviations of the components and the fastening of the parts by adhesive. The comparison between numerical and experimental results obtained for a case study shows a good agreement.