Object Shape Error Modelling and Simulation During Early Design Phase by Morphing Gaussian Random Fields

Geometric and dimensional variations in objects are caused by inevitable uncertainties in manufacturing processes and often lead to product quality challenges. Failing to model the effect of object shape errors, i.e., geometric and dimensional errors of parts, early during the design phase inhibits the ability to predict such quality challenges. This consequently leads to expensive design changes after freezing of design. State-of-art methodologies for modelling and simulating object shape error have limited defect fidelity, data versatility, and designer centricity that prevent their effective application during the early design phase. To overcome these limitations, this paper presents a novel Morphing Gaussian Random Field (MGRF) methodology for object shape error modelling and simulation. The MGRF methodology models the spatial correlation in the deviations of the part from its nominal design using Gaussian Random Fields and then, utilises the modelled spatial correlations to generate non-ideal parts by conditional simulations. The MGRF methodology has (i) high defect fidelity enabling it to simulate various part defects including local and global deformations, and technological patterns; (ii) high data versatility allowing it to simulate non-ideal parts under the constraint of limited data availability and to utilise historical non-ideal part data of similar parts; (iii) designer centric capabilities such as performing 'what if?' analysis of defects of practical importance; and; (iv) the ability to generate non-ideal parts conforming to statistical form tolerance specification without additional modelling effort. The aforementioned characteristics enable the MGRF methodology to accurately model and simulate the effect of object shape variations on product quality during the early design phase. Practical applications of the developed MGRF methodology and its advantages are demonstrated using sport-utility-vehicle door parts and compared against state-of-art methodologies. & COPY; 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).