Author(s)

W. Li, F.R. Hall and K.J. Stout

Abstract

Many measurements undertaken in industry and in research involve the usage of a surface plate, which is mounted at three support points. For improved measurement accuracy it is desirable to optimise the location of the supports so that the minimum deflection or flatness error of the plate can be obtained. Unfortunately until now, there have been no standards or recommendations for choosing the positions of the three point supports of surface plates, which are usually fixed in non-optimal positions by the manufacturers of these plates. Here a novel calculation was performed where the finite element technique was applied in conjunction with the Taguchi method and the orthogonal polynomial regre

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