Product cooperative disassembly sequence planning based on branch-and-bound algorithm

This paper focuses on the cooperative disassembly sequence planning (CDSP) problem which is essential to disassembly a large and complex product in practice. A disassembly hybrid graph model (DHGM) is constructed to describe the mating contact and noncontact priority relationships among constituting product components. Thus, the disassemblability constraint expression can be deduced from it by reasoning. The CDSP is different from the disassembly sequence planning except for they are NP-complete. Therefore, a novel method is presented to generate cooperative disassembly hierarchical tree (CDHT) from the DHGM based on branch-and-bound algorithm in which two user-defined variables are introduced to control the size of the CDHT .The optimal solutions with a minimal disassembly time are derived according to the objection function. Finally, an example illustrates the proposed method.