CIRP Annals - Manufacturing Technology 64 (2015) 2932

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CIRP Annals - Manufacturing Technology

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Proposal of a design method for semi-destructive disassembly

with split lines
Yasushi Umeda (1)a,*, Naoya Miyaji b, Yumi Shiraishi b, Shinichi Fukushige b
a
b

Department of Precision Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Japan
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan

A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Keywords:
Disassembly
Design method
Split line

This paper proposes a computer-aided design method for semi-destructive disassembly with split lines.
This method aims at extracting reusable, recyclable, or hazardous components more efciently than
manual disassembly with higher quality than shredding. The split line is a shape feature of a product that
enables to destruct the product into desired shape, like pull tabs of cans. The proposed method aids a
designer in adding proper split lines to extract target components. A case study showed that the semidestructive disassembly sequence of an air conditioner with the split lines reduces the number of steps
needed for extracting a target component.
2015 CIRP.

1. Introduction
Disassembly, often incorporated with dismantling, is a fundamental process for component reuse, remanufacturing, and
material recycling in all assembled products. The cost of end-oflife (EoL) treatment heavily depends on the amount of time
required to disassemble a product [1].
Especially, manual
operation in disassembly is often a labor intensive and costly
process. Especially, the time to localize and identify fasteners
covers approximately 30% of the total disassembly time [2].
However, the automation of the process has many difculties
due to the diversity of returned products in terms of their size,
structure, and condition [3,4]. Although the shredding or smashing
of products is a reasonable method of extracting recyclable
materials, it usually results in lower quality material mixtures in
the current recycling activities [5].
Over the past decades, therefore, numerous efforts have been
made on design for disassembly (DfD) (e.g., [1,6,7]), since the
efciency of disassembly is deeply coupled with the product
structure, fasteners, and the shape of components [8]. The prior
studies have shown that the economic feasibility of disassembly
can be guaranteed if such manual disassembling operations are
drastically simplied [1,5]. In this direction, active disassembly
[2,9] is a developing technology, in which specic external triggers
deform fasteners simultaneously and disassemble a product
efciently by using the characteristic of smart materials (e.g.,
shape memory alloys).
Generally speaking, a product can be disassembled in the
reverse order of assembly sequence, assuming all fasteners are

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: umeda@pe.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp (Y. Umeda).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cirp.2015.04.045
0007-8506/ 2015 CIRP.

removed individually. However, we do not need to maintain the

original shape of the components to be recycled or discarded in the
EoL processes. This implies that we can separate valuable and/or
hazardous components more rapidly by deforming or breaking the
components to be recycled or discarded. This leads to the idea of
semi-destructive disassembly, in which designated components
(i.e., hazardous or to be reused) are disassembled without any
injury while other components (i.e., to be recycled or discarded)
can be broken in order to increase the efciency of a disassembly
process. In other words, semi-destructive disassembly is positioned in the middle of disassembly and dismantling and combines
strong points of both of them.
This paper proposes a design support method for the semidestructive disassembly of products with split lines. The split line
enables to destruct a product into desired shape, like labels and
caps of PET bottles as shown in Fig. 1. This method aims at

Fig. 1. Example of split lines (PET bottle).

Y. Umeda et al. / CIRP Annals - Manufacturing Technology 64 (2015) 2932

30

supporting a designer to add split lines to a product in order to

extract reusable or hazardous components more efciently.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 outlines
the theory and procedure of the method. Section 3 illustrates the
results of a case study on an air conditioner. After the discussion of
the case study in Section 4, Section 5 concludes the paper.
2. Design for semi-destructive disassembly with split lines
2.1. Theory of removability between rigid bodies
First, we dene removability of a rigid body. Let B1 and B2
denote two rigid bodies in a three-dimensional space (see Fig. 2).
Let D be the direction of relative movement of B1 from B2. For the
sake of simplicity, this article considers parallel translation of the
bodies without rotation.
When B1 moves in the direction of D, the cumulative set of
intersection between B1 and B2 is dened as an obstacle region
OB1 B2 B1 ; D. If this region is the empty set, B1 is dened as
removable from B2 with respect to D.
OB1 B2 B1 ; D is composed of two sub-regions OB2 B1 ; D and
OB1 B1 ; D, a part of B2 and B1 respectively. OB2 B1 ; D is the shadow
of B1 projected on B2 in the direction of D. In order to remove B1
from B2 toward the direction of D without breaking B1, OB2 B1 ; D
must be cut apart and removed from B2.
On the other hand, OB1 B1 ; D is the shadow of B2 projected on B1
in the backward direction of D. To remove B1 from B2 without
breaking B2, OB1 B1 ; D must be cut apart from B1. Therefore,
OB1 B1 ; D \ B1 is dened as the removable region of B1 in which,
by splitting this region from OB1 B1 ; D, the remaining part can be
removed toward the direction of D.

Fig. 2. Removability between two rigid bodies.

2. Adding split lines to each shell

3. Generating disassembly sequences with split lines
4. Selecting a disassembly sequence
We assume that the target component is surrounded by
multiple-layered shells. In step 1, the method classies all
components except for the target into the layers of the shells.
And we call the outermost layer the 1st shell.
In step 2, split lines are added to each shell in order to split and
peel the shell from the 1st to the last, and to pick the target from
the windows of the shells. Each split line divides a shell into two
fragments and the peeled one makes a window. To support the
designers decision in this step, the method suggests a candidate of
split line (we call it baseline) on each shell.
In step 3, the designer combines the candidates of split lines of
each shell derived in step 2 to make a disassembly sequence from
the 1st shell to the last. For supporting this step, the method
arranges the split line candidates in a tree structure to manage the
sequences.
Finally, the designer selects a sequence by evaluating the
efciency of the candidate sequences. For example, we evaluated
the number of elemental operations in a disassembly sequence in
the case study in Section 3. Since this step is not the main focus of
this paper, the following sections describe steps 1, 2, and 3 in detail.
2.3. Classifying components into shells
Formally, components included in the 1st shell S1 of a product P
are dened as follows (see Fig. 3): given a ray r emanating from any
point s in a target component T and intersecting with a component
C, if a point p in r \ C exists such that any point q(6 p) in r \ P is
closer to s than p, then C is a member of S1. Where r \ C and r \ P
denote intersection segments between the ray and C and P,
respectively. By applying the same classication algorithm to other
components, the components located in the outermost layer
except for the 1st shell are classied into the 2nd shell. In the same
way, all components are classied into shells from the 1st to the
last shell. Fig. 3 depicts a 2-dimentional example of the shell
classication. Note that shells do not always enclose a target
entirely in this method (see the 2nd shell in this example). We look
this deciency space as a window of the shell.

2.2. Outline of the method

The proposed method assumes that a three-dimensional solid
model and an EoL scenario of a product are provided. The scenario
describes EoL processes for each component of the product
including manual disassembly, machine shredding, sorting,
smelting, nal treatment, remanufacturing, and so on.
At the outset of the method, the designer identies a target
component to be extracted before shredding or smashing the
product based on the scenario for recovering the components
value preferentially by reuse, remanufacturing, material recycling,
or removing hazardous materials included.
In many cases, such a target component is covered by other
components. We view this structure as an analogy to a kernel and
its shells constitution. The surrounding components (shells)
obstruct the extraction of the target (kernel) from the product.
However, without disassembling the shells, the target can be
retrieved from gaps or holes of the shells (we call such a space a
window), which can be made by splitting the shells and removing
the divided shell fragments.
The method supports a designer in determining the location of
split lines on the geometric model of the product at the detailed
design stage. The split lines are shape features added to each shell,
which enable to break the shell into fragments by applying force to
designated points of the shell surfaces.
The method consists of the following four steps:
1. Classifying components into shells

r
1st shell

2nd shell
Target

Fig. 3. Example of shell classication.

2.4. Adding split lines to each shell

2.4.1. Setting an extraction direction to the target
After the shell classication, the designer sets an extraction
direction DT to the target component T. With this direction, the
obstacle region OP(T, DT) of the target is calculated by using
geometrical intersection between T and the product P.
The process of the semi-destructive disassembly can be
formalized as the sequence of removing each obstacle region by
breaking and peeling the shells. This region moves within the
product model when the designer changes the direction. By using
this feature, the designer interactively searches for a feasible
direction minimizing the obstacle regions, with a help of the
methods indication of the obstacle regions.
2.4.2. Calculating removable and obstacle regions
Let us here focus on the relationship between a shell Si and its
inner-layer shells (the outer-layer shells are ignored here). Since

Y. Umeda et al. / CIRP Annals - Manufacturing Technology 64 (2015) 2932

the fragments of the inner shells, which will be peeled, should be

removed through the window of Si, a split line should be added to
the shell so as to encircle obstacle regions [ j > i OSi F j ; D j as well as
OSi T; DT , where Fj is the peeled fragment of the inner shell Sj(j > i)
and Dj is the direction of removing Fj as shown in Fig. 4.
Since shells are, in most cases, geometrically engaged by each
other, shell fragments cannot always be peeled off due to the
interdependent constraints between shells. To avoid such intershell engagement, the method identies the removable region of
each shell. As described in Section 2.1, OSi Si ; Di \ Si is the
removable region of Si toward an extraction direction Di. When
a split line is added to the inside of this region, it is guaranteed that
the fragment divided by the line can be removed. They are the two
conditions that each split line shall satisfy as shown in Fig. 4.
The method visualizes the obstacle regions of the target and the
inner shell fragments and the designer arranges the removable
region of Si so as to include all the obstacle regions by changing the
direction Di. This calculation is applied to each shell from the most
inner one to the 1st in a stepwise manner. The extraction direction DT
of the target is unchanged during this calculation for all shells, while
the direction Di for removing each shell is arranged individually.

31

Preferably, the window enclosed by the split line does not

include any screw. In such a case, the shell can be peeled only after
splitting. However, because of mechanical or esthetic reasons, no
unscrewing is not always possible. Therefore, the designer modies
the baselines by considering the balance between the efciency of
splitting, the number of screws in the window, and other design
aspects described above. For supporting this modication, the
method indicates the split line, removable regions, obstacle regions,
and the number of screws included in the fragment to be peeled.
Here, unscrewing is a representative example of a laborious
disassembly operation. The method deals with other laborious
operations in the same manner.
2.5. Generating disassembly sequences with split lines
After determining the candidates of split lines on individual
shells for one extraction direction, the designer may set another
direction on the product and search other candidates, repeatedly.
The method structures the split line candidates in the form of a tree
as shown in Fig. 6. This gure indicates that each extraction
direction DkT (k = 1,2,3,. . .) has multiple candidates of split lines on
the most inner shell as its children, and each candidate of split line
Lln (l = 1,2,3,. . .) in turn has multiple children of split lines Ll1
m on
the outer-layer shell, because the location of split lines depends on
that of the inner-layer shells as described in Section 2.4. In this tree
structure, a path from a direction node to a split line node at the
bottom is a disassembly sequence.

1
1
Fig. 4. Obstacle and removable regions.

2.4.3. Deriving baselines for determining split lines

Next the method derives a baseline on each shell as a hopeful
candidate of a split line. The baseline is generated to encircle the
obstacle regions with minimum length in the removable region.
Here, we assume that shorter lines are preferable owing to the
cutting cost of the shell. Moreover, as shown in Fig. 5, a gap
between components in a shell can be regarded as a part of a split
line. These boundaries of components should be utilized for
shortening the length of breaking the shell. The method at this step
tries to shorten the baseline by incorporating the boundaries of
components as shown in Fig. 5.
The designer modies the detailed location of split lines from
the baselines, considering, for instance, the shape and function of
components including their mechanical characteristics, material
properties, and esthetic design. The main focus of this study is not
on such detailed shape analysis but on support for designers in
deriving feasible candidates of split lines.

Fig. 5. Baseline.

1
2

1
3

Direcons

th

shell split-lines

( 1) th shell split-lines

A disassembly sequence
Fig. 6. Disassembly sequence tree.

3. Case study
As a case study, we applied the proposed method to an indoor
unit of a split-type air conditioner. Based on the current EoL
treatment of air conditioners in Japan, the heat exchanger is set as
the target to be extracted before shredding, because it consists of
large mass components of recyclable materials, such as an
aluminum n comb and copper tubes.
The prototype system based on the proposed method imported
the geometric model of the product and classied all components
other than the target into shells. The front cover, the front grill, the
louver, and the main chassis were assigned to the 1st shell, and the
target was located just under the 2nd shell composed of the fan, the
motor, and the electrical unit (see Fig. 7).
Next, we examined ve candidates of extraction direction on
the 3D model, which are perpendicular to the front, right, left,
upper, and lower faces of the 1st shell. Among them, we selected
the right side direction that minimizes the obstacle region of the
target. Fig. 7 shows the segmentation result of the 1st shell with
respect to this extraction direction, where the red and green
colored areas on the 1st shell are the obstacle regions of the target
and the peeled fragments F2 of the 2nd shell, and the deep blue area
is the removable region of the 1st shell. The red broken line is the
baseline of the 1st shell, which encloses the obstacle regions with
minimum length incorporating with the boundary (blue broken
line) of the front cover and the main chassis. We modied this
baseline so as to simplify the line shape for easy breaking.

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32

Fig. 8 shows the result of the semi-destructive disassembly of the

air conditioner with the split lines, where the target is extracted in
the extraction direction after splitting the cover and chassis, and
removing the electrical unit as a peeled fragment of the 2nd shell. In
this case, this unit was released simultaneously by breaking the 1st
shell. This solution presumed that the shells can be split by applying
impulsive force by using, for example, a hammer. In this case, the
shock of the impact is insignicant for the metal recycling.
In this case study, we evaluated the result with a simple method
in which the number of elemental operations (steps) needed for
extracting the heat exchanger was counted, such as breaking shells,
removing fragments, and unfastening screws. Table 1 compares the
evaluation results between the disassembly of the original design
and the semi-destructive disassembly of the new design with the
split lines. The number of steps was reduced by 58% from the
original, which requires the disassembly of almost all components to
reach the target. The new design reduces the number of unscrewing
operations from 5 to 0 by destructing the shells along the split lines.

Fig. 7. Segmentation of the 1st shell.

shells. The designer should nd out a well-balanced solution that

keeps the functionality of the product in the use phase and makes
split lines broken easily in the dismantling phase.
For splitting the shells, various approaches can be applied
besides by breaking the split lines added in the manufacturing
phase: such as by determining and cutting the split lines by a
circular saw in the EoL phase, and by unfastening the screws that
connect fragments divided by split lines beforehand in the
manufacturing phase. In other words, the method of the split line
proposed in this article is general besides the realization methods.
While the proposed method did not assume the changes of
product structure and fastener location, the cooperation of design
changes in the structure, fastener, and shape of components with
split lines is a promising approach to increase the efciency
drastically. In the case study, for example, if the boundary between
the cover and the chassis was changed to follow the split line, the
efciency of cutting the shell increased. Incorporating such design
changes into the proposed method is one of our future issues.
The shells were divided and peeled individually in the case
study. In some cases, multiple shells can be divided and removed at
a time. Such a combined dividing operation is critical for reducing
dismantling time. The extension of the method for combining split
lines of multiple shells is another future issue.
In this study, the target was assumed to be a single component
or module. To cope with various EoL scenarios including multiple
EoL options such as reuse, remanufacturing, and recycling, the
method should be extended in order to deal with multiple targets.
Theoretically, this is not difcult.
For evaluating the semi-destructive disassembly sequences, we
used a simple measurement of counting the steps needed for the
sequence. For more accurate estimation of operation time and
costs, employing the concept of the work factor (WF) method [10]
is a plausible approach. In the case of the semi-destructive
disassembly proposed here, the length of split lines, the materials
and shapes of divided components, as well as tools used for
splitting should be included in the time estimation formula of WF.
5. Conclusion

Fig. 8. Result of dismantling with split lines.

Table 1
Comparison of steps needed for the disassembly between the original design and
the new design with split lines.
Operation type
Unscrewing
Splitting shell
Removing fragment
Total

Original design

New design

5
0
7

0
2
3

12

4. Discussion
The case study shows that the method succeeded in supporting
a designer in adding split lines to the product. The proposed system
imported the 3D model of the product and generated removable
and obstacle regions on each shell and derived baselines as a
feasible candidate of split lines. We found in the case study that the
method provides a powerful scheme to derive the baselines by
using geometric processing algorithms.
In modifying the locations of split lines, mechanical analysis
might be needed for ensuring the functional integrity of the
product. Generally speaking, split lines weaken the stiffness and
rigidity of components. Shells should be divided only when
designated amount of forces are applied to designated points of the

This paper proposed a design support method for semidestructive disassembly with split lines. The method aids a
designer to determine the location of the split lines by clarifying
the feasible regions of a product model to be split and by
generating hopeful candidates of split lines.
Future works include the extension of the proposed method
including multiple targets, the division of multiple shells at a time,
and the extraction of the divided fragment with rotation, and the
development of a design support system for the cooperation of
design changes in the structure, joining, shape of components with
the split lines, as well as development of a method for the
validation of the mechanical performance and functional integrity
of designed products with split lines.
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