Thermal error modeling of multisource information fusion in machine tools.

Thermal deformation is one of the principal factors that influence the machining accuracy of machine tools, and it can be improved by thermal error compensation. This paper presents a method of thermal error modeling using multisource information fusion, which can further improve the thermal error compensation accuracy. To set up a fusion model with optimal performance, two or more thermal error models should be established, from which a few models should be chosen to complement each other, and then combined into a synthesis model. In this paper, a dynamic thermal error model and a finite element model are combined to build a fusion model for lathe z-direction thermal error according to a fusion algorithm. The inputs for the fusion model are the values detected by the thermal sensors and the infrared imaging. An experiment carried out on a lathe verifies the validity of this modeling method. The results show that the multisource fusion model of thermal error can not only improve the prediction accuracy of thermal error over that of a single model, but also possesses better robustness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]