Virtual reality environment for disassembly sequences generation and evaluation
Résumé
In virtual reality environment (VRE) a human model is often involved in a digital mock-up (DMU) model for as-sembly/disassembly (A/D) operation simulation. However, it has limited application areas because of its high cost investment. In this context, a mixed Virtual Reality Disassembly Environment (VRDE) is developed based on Python programming language using mixed VTK (Visualization Toolkit) and ODE (Open Dynamics Engine) libraries. First it allows the generation of the possible disassembly sequences for selective disassembly operations. Based on the lowest levels of a disassembly product graph the proposed method considers the geometric contact and collision relationships among the components in order to generate the proposed Disassembly Geometry Con-tacting Graph (DGCG). The latter is then used for disassembly sequence generation thus allowing decreasing the number of possible disassembly sequences. The method is applied for automatically generating the selective dis-assembly sequences thus allowing reducing the computation resources and is illustrated through an example. Secondly, focusing on the evaluation of disassembly operations in a VRE, a method based on five new criteria is proposed. The criteria are presented by dimensionless coefficients automatically calculated thus allowing evalu-ating disassembly sequences complexity in a VRE. The proposed method is tested and an example for disassembly operations evaluation of a mechanical assembly is presented. The results of the analysis and findings demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approaches for disassembly sequences generations and their evaluation thus pro-viding significant improvement of the Product Development Process (PDP).