Disassembly sequencing for end-of-life products

When a product reaches its end of lifecycle, its components can be reused, recycled or disposed depending on their conditions and recovery value. All these strategies involve the disassembly of products. A method for generation of disassembly sequences is proposed in this paper. It is based on hierarchical analysis of the modules constituting the product. The method uses informations such as: list of subsets (modules), liaison-component graph, part geometry, functional contacts between components and modules, component properties (density, surface treatment,) all contained in a database. It has been tested on several products disassembly. The application of the method is explained with an example.