Evaluation of cylindricity using combinatorics

Several numerical methods have been developed for finding the minimum zone of a cylinder. This paper presents a combinatorial method termed the Minimu m Shell for cylindricity evaluation. For a given set of measured data point s, the method efficiently searches for the six points that determine the mi nimum zone of cylindricity. This method is self-contained, without the requ irement of mathematical programming software support, and is equal to or su perior to other methods of evaluating cylindricity in terms of accuracy, ef ficiency, and simplicity. Computational results are given.