Assembly/Disassembly Analysis and Modeling Techniques: A Review

Optimization and realistic virtual simulation of the Assembly and Disassembly (A/D) process are relevant research subjects, considering the significant role played by these operations in the initial stages of the product design, as well as in the fabrication, ergonomics, training, service or recycling stages. Literature reports many methods used for analysis and optimization and different simulation applications based on assembly connection concept or which use information referring to components mating. Moreover, virtual reality (VR) environments have significantly evolved towards the A/D simulation, highlighting new requirements for the preparation stages and their integration. All these simulations address different objectives: A/D sequencing, path planning, ergonomic analysis etc., and are complementary to each other. The main objective of the research presented in this paper is to propose new tools for enhancing the A/D simulation capabilities and to define a software development pipeline, as part of an on-going research effort aimed at creating a complex virtual assembly simulation platform. In order to do that, firstly a comparative review of the assembly modules available in A/D analysis software and simulation platforms, and the assembly modeling tools provided by commercial Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software is made. Different elements are investigated: mating conditions (geometric constraints) used for reciprocally placing components in an assembly, functions used for contacts generation, as well as clashes and interferences detection tools. Furthermore, the analysis focuses on determining what type of information related to components relative mobility is available in the existing software and how this is used. Starting from here, a first implementation of the platform, which has been developed to address some assembly analysis tasks, is presented for illustrating the concepts and assessing the feasibility of the approach.