Optimal Design of Component Layout and Fastening Methods for the Facilitation of Reuse and Recycle

ABSTRACTDue to rise of environmental awareness and enactment of legislation in recent years, products that reach their end-of-life need to be collected, disassembled and reused/recycled. However, since it is impractical to reuse/recycle every component that makes up a product from a cost effective standpoint, only high-value components are reused/recycled and the rest of components is discarded. Therefore, there is a need to design a product which high-value components can be removed with less disassembly cost and work for the facilitation of reuse and recycle. In this research, design of component layout and fastening methods inside a product during conceptual design phase is focused on and a new method of optimizing them is developed. The proposed method consists of layout optimization and fastening method optimization and explores the optimal component layout and fastening methods which high-value components can be removed with minimum effort by executing two optimizations cooperatively.