Design and Planning for Active Disassembly

Abstract

Design for disassembly offers different disassembly techniques that can facilitate the disassembly process greatly. Allowing the safe separation of different product components without any need for a direct contact between the parts to be separated and the operator. In addition to allowing the usage of a single disassembly technique in different disassembly situations. Currently, design for disassembly is considered as the preferred end of life scenario for most of products. As it reduces greatly the amount of waste and scrape that needs to be disposed in landfills resulting from the products at their end of life. By enabling the recovery of reusable components and materials that can be used in later generation of products. Active disassembly is considered as an emerging point of research in design for disassembly. That is based on using parts made from smart materials to conduct the disassembly process instead of using tools. Encouraging the remanufacturing, reuse, and recycling of the recovered components. In addition to facilitating maintenance and different repair services. The present thesis has been presented to introduce the active disassembly concept as a new disassembly technique, that allows the dismantling of assemblies for recycling or maintenance by activating shape memory alloy (SMA) actuators that were implemented in the assembly during its product design phase. Several procedures were conducted to build the successful SMA actuator. First, the behavior of the SMA rods under different compressive strains was studied. Second, the suitable compressive strain value that could generate the maximum possible recovery force