As indicated by its name, the purpose of flexible tolerancing is to take into account the flexibility of the parts in a tolerancing process. It allows to evaluate the permissibles geometrical defects by both geometrical and mechanical criteria. These works deal first with the elaboration of a model able to predict the mechanical behaviour of an assembly of larges and flexibles parts which are suject to geometrical defects induced by their manufacturing process. A method has thus been suggested in order to implement geometrical variations which are realistic according to these hypothetical geometrical defects. To simulate the assembling process, the unilateral contact phenomenon and the stiffness variations induced by the geometrical variability have been taken into account. Depending on these assumptions, some strategies of tolerance analysis with Monte Carlo or the method of influence coefficients have been compared in order to choose the one minimizing the computational costs while maintaining the accuracy of the results. Finally, these works are completed with an industrial study case: a truss supporting equipments and hanging under the fuselage floor of an Airbus A350.
Flexible tolerancing of large aeronautical structures assemblies