Title: Automated analysis of product disassembly to determine environmental impact

Authors: David I. Agu, Matthew I. Campbell

Addresses: Cockrell School of Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station C2100, Austin, TX 78712-0284, USA. ' Cockrell School of Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station C2100, Austin, TX 78712-0284, USA

Abstract: Manufacturers are increasingly being held responsible for the fate of their products once reaching end-of-life. This research uses disassembly time and re-cyclability to gauge the environmental impact of a product upon disposal, where re-cyclability is the amount of mass recovered when parts are removed from an assembly. A graph-based method of representing product assemblies is suggested, which takes component connection methods into account. The result of a disassembly simulation is Pareto sets whose contents represent stages in the disassembly process. These are then used to judge a product|s performance during end-of-life, from a re-cyclability perspective, against those of other products.

Keywords: automated disassembly; disassembly automation; environmental impact; recyclability; graph grammars; Pareto; design for disassembly; DFD; disassembly analysis; end-of-life products; tree-searching; EPR; extended producer responsibility; recycling; component connection; disassembly simulation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSDES.2010.036970

International Journal of Sustainable Design, 2010 Vol.1 No.3, pp.241 - 256

Published online: 20 Nov 2010 *

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