Disassembiosis: a system to study product configuration optimization for end-of-life disassembly

摘要

In many cases, disassembly is an essential step to facilitate material and part recycling processes at the end of the product's useful life. Product configuration is a critical factor that influences the suitability of a product's end-of-life (EOL) disassembly. The complexity involved in studying the influence of configuration design on EOL disassembly has limited the scope of current design for disassembly (DFD) approaches to guideline based prescriptive methods and index-based evaluation techniques. These approaches do not provide specific redesign advice. In this paper, a differential approach (that makes small geometric product modifications) is used in conjunction with the configuration evaluation techniques to study the combinatorial configuration design optimization problem. The differential approach along with specific configuration features is used to derive different structural principles of the design space. These principles provide insights into the possibilities and the natural shortcomings of automated optimization of a product by relating the effects of design constraints and disassembly requirements on product redesign. A hierarchical evolutionary programming-based disassembiosis system is developed to test the possibilities offered by the application of the differential approach and various structural principles.