Abstract:

To provide effective support information for design for remanufacture (DfRem), a model of product hierarchical failure modes information transfer chain and its polychromatic model are put forward. And the parts with potential remanufacturability or reusability and the scrap modes information are turned back to the DfRem process.Through analyzing the relationship among the hierarchical structure of recycling products, failure modes and recycling decision-making, a product hierarchical failure modes transfer chain model is constructed. This model is formally described in mathematical language using the polychromatic sets to make it readily manipulated by computers, which is defined as the product failure mode information transfer polychromatic model for DfRem. The parts with remanufacturability and other parts’ scrap modes can be identified by reasoning with the contour boolean matrix of polychromatic sets.The DfRem process is given under the support of product failure mode information transfer polychromatic model.Finally, the case study of the piston connecting rod product verifies the feasibility of the proposed method.

Key words: failure modes, polychromatic sets, recycling products, design for remanufacture (DfRem)