Title: Evaluating subassembly stability using stability directed subgraphs

Authors: Luc Laperriere, Andre Lavoie

Addresses: Laboratoire de Productique, Universite du Quebec a Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, Canada. ' Laboratoire de Productique, Universite du Quebec a Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, Canada

Abstract: This paper presents a graph-theoretic approach to compute the degree of stability of the subassemblies formed during assembly sequence generation in Computer-Aided Assembly Planning (CAAP). A first stage of the approach builds a connected stability directed graph, which is a subgraph of the complete graph representation of the product. Vertices of this directed subgraph are the produc|s parts and directed edges show explicitly which parts are stabilised by which other. The concept of stability matrices, also described in this paper, is used by an algorithm that builds the stability directed subgraph. Once the stability directed subgraph has been constructed, the new information that it contains can be processed in order to estimate subassembly|s stability. In particular, by mapping every possible disassembly operation to every possible cut in the stability directed subgraph, the stability of the newly generated subassemblies can be estimated from an analysis of the direction and number of broken directed arcs in the cut. Examples of application of the model to investigate potential stability problems at assembly time is also presented.

Keywords: assembly planning; disassembly; graph theory; subassembly stability; stability directed subgraphs; computer-aided assembly planning; CAAP.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCAT.1997.062261

International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology, 1997 Vol.10 No.5/6, pp.348 - 360

Published online: 02 Jun 2014 *

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