Title: A liaison model for disassembly-reassembly product ecodesign

Authors: Christian Mascle, Ke Xing

Addresses: Mechanical Engineering Department, Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, P.O. Box 6079, Station Centre-Ville, Montreal, Quebec, H3C 3A7, Canada. ' School of Advanced Manufacturing & Mechanical Engineering, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes Campus, G.P.O. Box 2471, Adelaide, SA 5001, Australia

Abstract: This paper focuses on non-destructive disassembly for mechanical products as part of environment friendly manufacturing. An original approach using a clustering method for assembly and the introduction of a mathematical model, describing the fuzzy liaisons between the components, allow us to design the product for disassembly, service, recycling, upgrading and assembly. They also facilitate the determination of the problems related to the automation of assembly and disassembly sequences generation. To do so, the modelling of functional liaisons between parts helps to distinguish a simple contact from an attachment and subsets from subassemblies. Liaisons between components are described by matrices of fuzzy half degrees of liaison. The virtual locking liaisons could be extracted automatically from a B-rep model of a mechanical product on CAD and attachment liaisons are deduced from a fuzzy evaluation of their strength and condition changes.

Keywords: ecodesign; environment-friendly manufacturing; design methodology; assembly-disassembly; upgradability; subassembly; half degree of liaison; fuzzy logic; pseudomatrices; product design; sustainable design; nondestructive disassembly; clustering; recycling; assembly sequences; disassembly sequences.

DOI: 10.1504/IJDE.2009.030179

International Journal of Design Engineering, 2009 Vol.2 No.3, pp.346 - 368

Published online: 11 Dec 2009 *

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