Decision support tool for the disassembly of reusable parts on an end-of-life aircraft

The problem of processing end-of-life (EOL) aircrafts concerns some technological and environmental challenges. Different possibilities are offered to the owner(s) of an EOL aircraft, each with its positive and negative impacts on the 3 spheres of sustainable development. The EOL processing includes 4 major steps: decontamination, disassembly of parts, dismantling of the remaining carcass, materials recovery and/or landfill. In this work, disassembly of reusable parts for their introduction on the secondhand market is discussed. Reusability of parts extracted from an airplane is conditional upon compliance with all applicable maintenance procedures in disassembly step. When dismantling many parts (reusable parts), it is necessary to merge all procedures in order to obtain an optimized and rational disassembly approach. Maintenance tasks run on an aircraft are grouped in the “Aircraft Maintenance Manual” (AMM). The aim of this research is to organize the disassembly of reusable equipments with a model, on which structured and optimized strategies can be developed (in disassembly). Reusable parts disassembly consists in a selective and nondestructive disassembly. It is not about developing sequences of operations (given in the AMM with the tasks), but arranging maintenance tasks together. Execution zone and tasks preparation (preliminary tasks) are important criteria. The analysis of the actual literature does not find a suitable method for the problem. Thus, aspects of graphical method, wave propagation approach, and Petri nets approach in disassembly applications are considered to define the model. The proposed model is a representation of the entire work that has to be done on an airplane (set of tasks to be performed for dismantling equipments). Moreover, it has to support different strategies for