Optimal assembly sequence generation for flexible and rigid parts product using stress information matrix

Abstract

Assembly Sequence is one of the most important operations in the manufacturing process as it influences the cost of the overall product compared to the other manufacturing operations like assembly line balancing, inspection, material handling etc. involved to make the product. To perform an effective assembly operation, optimal assembly sequences are required. Achieving an optimal assembly sequence is a difficult task as it is a nondeterministic polynomial time problem and it also involves the extraction of assembly predicates from the product to obtain feasible sequences. Researchers have applied many mathematical (like assembly connection graph cut set method, assembly subset detection method and many more), knowledge-based, and artificial intelligence methods for finding the optimal assembly sequence., Artificial intelligence techniques are successful in achieving the optimal assembly sequences with less search space for more part assemblies. Most of the research has been carried out on generating the optimal assembly sequences for rigid parts assembly, very little work has been carried out to generate optimal assembly sequences for the products having the combination of the rigid and deformable parts. In this paper, the authors have developed a methodology to generate optimal assembly sequences for the product having rigid and deformable parts using the Stress Information Matrix (SIM). In the proposed methodology, the authors developed SIM based on the type of parts that contact in the product using the ANSYS contact analysis tool. The proposed methodology is applied to 11 parts of butterfly assembly for generating the optimal assembly sequences.