Assembly plans generation of complex machines based on the stability concept

Abstract

Assembly Sequence Planning (ASP) is one of the well-known optimization problems in the manufacturing industry. It represents a great deal of interest over the past three decades. This paper aims to present a method for generating ASP, taking into account the stability assignment during assembly’s operations. The developed method uses the topological and geometrical assembly constraints extracted and generated from CAD system (assembly constraints, mass and center of gravity of components, interference and contact matrices), to guarantee the generation of a feasible ASP. The main contribution of this research is the development of a method which respects the stability assignment of heavy machines during the assembly’s operations. Also, it reduces the design costs and minimizes the time of replacement or repair of failing components of industrial equipments, which has become complicated task given the complexity of today’s mechanisms. A validation example is used to highlight the advantages of the proposed approach.