Airframe dismantling optimization for aerospace aluminum valorization

Seeking the most cost-effective process, dismantlers must continuously make decisions while they part and shear out a plane. The mathematical model presented optimizes the profitability of aircraft dismantling process by determining which airframe entities must be sheared and sorted prior to shred its components or which entities must be directly shredded. The model also identifies which shredded components should be sorted in order to upgrade recovered materials composition. Until now, disassembly sequences generation and disassembly planning methods have been elaborated based on assembly connection types and generic mathematical models have been published. Most of the time, these approaches are time consuming and require efforts to be adapted to a specific product. The model proposed here is aircraft-oriented and is not only based on assembly connection types and fasteners classification which are considered as being too restrictive. Knowing that an airplane is made of about 60 % of aluminum alloys and that aluminum recycling could considerably reduce the aerospace industry's ecological footprint, the model focuses on aircraft aluminum recovery.