An improved genetic algorithm for sphericity error evaluation

Sphere is widely used in many engineering applications and its geometric error has a serious effect on the performance of mechanical parts. In this paper, a heuristic approach, that is an improved genetic algorithm (GA), is proposed to implement sphericity error evaluation. Then, the concepts of the minimum zone sphere (MZS), the minimum circumscribed sphere (MCS) and the maximum inscribed sphere (MIS) are clearly defined and their objective function calculation methods are formulated. Finally, the experiment results evaluated by different methods confirmed the proposed GA effectiveness. Compared with conventional evaluation methods, it has the advantages of simple algorithms, strong robustness and high precision. Also, it is a unified approach for other form errors evaluation.