Elastic-Plastic Contact Behaviors Modeling for Tolerance Analysis

This paper proposes a mechanics-based method for calculating the elastic-plastic contact behaviors in tolerance analysis. Specifically, form deviations of geometric features are modeled based on the concept of Skin Model Shapes (SMS). Elastic-plastic contact behaviors are calculated by an improved Boundary Element Method (BEM). The calculation accuracy and efficiency are compared with the Finite Element Method (FEM). The simulation results indicate that the proposed method has good calculation accuracy and significantly improves the calculation efficiency at the same time, which provides a feasible method to consider the effects of elastic-plastic contact behaviors in tolerance analysis.