Generic Classification and Automatic Extraction of Mechanical Interlocking Features from CAD Model

Abstract

AbstractThis paper presents the classification, representation and extraction of mechanical interlocking features (MIFs) from the CAD model. Mechanical interlocking features (MIFs) are geometric features of two or more parts that when caused to come into contact and fully engage, prevent relative motion in certain directions of translation and/or rotation, including, when features physically interlock, unwanted separation in any or certain directions. The MIFs are represented as a set of faces with a characteristic arrangement among the faces among parts in proximity. This characteristic arrangement of contact faces and their topological relationships help in classification of MIFs. The MIFs are classified into elementary and compound types based on the number of assembly features available at the joint location. Even though CAD assembly models are available to users, it is rather difficult for the user to manually extract the assembly feature information from CAD models. It is therefore a set of algorithms are developed to extract the attributes of MIFs and identify MIFs from CAD model. CAD assembly models from aerospace domain have been used in order to illustrate and validate the proposed approach.KeywordsMechanical interlocking jointRepresentationExtractionAssembly feature