Uncertainty analysis of motion error for mechanisms and Kriging-based solutions

Abstract

In this work, the issue of uncertainty analysis of motion errors for mechanisms is studied. First, two definitions of motion errors, that is, maximum error and accumulative error, are introduced to measure the motion accuracy in a comprehensive way. Then, the method for performing an uncertainty analysis of the two errors is discussed. For the maximum error, an analysis of the failure probability and the corresponding sensitivity analysis are carried out. For the accumulative error, the variance-based sensitivity is studied to quantify the contributions of input variables to the mechanism performance. A Kriging-based method is proposed to reduce the computational cost of the uncertainty analysis of motion errors. Finally, four examples including the classical four-bar mechanism and the landing gear mechanism for aeronautical purposes are studied with the proposed method. Discussions on the results show that the uncertainty analysis of motion errors can provide helpful information for mechanisms.