Squeak and rattle prevention by geometric variation management using a two-stage evolutionary optimisation approach

Paper in proceedings, 2020

Squeak and rattle are annoying sounds that often are regarded as the indicators for defects and quality issues by the automotive customers. Among the major causes for the generation of squeak and rattle sounds, geometric variation or tolerance stack-up is a key contributor. In the assembly process,
the dimensional variation in critical interfaces for generating squeak and rattle events can be magnified due to tolerance stackup. One provision to manage the tolerance stack-up in these critical interfaces is to optimise the location of connectors between parts in an assembly. Hence, the focus of this work is to prevent squeak and rattle by introducing a geometric variation management approach to be used in the design phase in the automotive industry. The objective is to identify connection configurations that result in minimum variation and deviation in selected measure points from the critical interfaces for squeak and rattle. In this study, a two-stage evolutionary optimisation scheme, based on the genetic algorithm employing the elitism
pool, is introduced to fine-tune the connectors’ configuration in an assembly. The objective function was defined as the variation and the deviation in the normal direction and the squeak plane. In the first stage, the location of one-dimensional connectors was found by minimising the objective function in the rattle direction. In the second stage, the best combination of some of the connectors from the first stage was found to define planar fasteners to optimise the objective function both in the rattle direction and the squeak plane. It was shown that by using the proposed two-stage optimisation scheme, the variation and deviation results in critical interfaces for squeak and rattle improved compared to the baseline results.