| Free-form nonrigid parts form the substance of today's automotive and aerospace industries. These parts have different shapes in free state due to their dimensional and geometric variations, gravity and residual strains. For the geometric inspection of such compliant parts, special inspection fixtures, in combination with coordinate measuring systems (CMM) and/or optical data acquisition devices (scanners) are used. This inevitably causes additional costs and delays that result in a lack of competitiveness in the industry.;The goal of this thesis is to facilitate the dimensional and geometrical inspection of flexible components from a point cloud without using a jig or secondary conformation operation. More specifically, we aim to develop a methodology to localize and quantify the profile defects in the case of thin shells which are typical to the aerospace and automotive industries.;The presented methodology is based on the fact that the interpoint geodesic distance between any two points of a shape remains unchangeable during an isometric deformation. This study elaborates on the theory and general methods for the metrology of nonrigid parts. We have developed a Generalized Numerical Inspection Fixture (GNIF), a robust methodology which merges existing technologies in metric and computational geometry, nonlinear dimensionality reduction techniques, and finite element methods to introduce a general approach to the fixtureless geometrical inspection of nonrigid parts. |
