Predicting Variations in Sheet Metal Assemblies in Car Body Design

Sheet metal assemblies are very common in the automotive field. The related high flexibility causes parts/assemblies to vary at each assembly step. Controlling variations of such compliant elements during the manufacturing process then requires specific attention and devices to avoid large deformations. This is in particular true in multistage assembly processes, largely adopted in the car body manufacturing. For engineers it is a strategic task to statistically predict how parts and assemblies may vary under different assembly configurations. So, computer simulations are welcome if they are able to quickly analyze variations of compliant assemblies in multistage assembly processes, starting from the statistical variability at part level, and getting the final variability out at assembly level. Starting from an overview of the current solutions available in the recent literature, a method is here described that, combining linearly statistical variation analysis with FEA, gives a fast response to the variation analysis of compliant assemblies in multistage processes.