Pressure-sensitive fasteners for active disassembly

This paper presents a number of novel active fasteners developed to significantly lower disassembly costs during reconditioning, remanufacturing, and recycling of products. In the initial stage of the fastener development process, the applicability of distinct trigger signals for active disassembly (AD) is evaluated. Based on this evaluation, the high robustness of using a pressure increase or decrease as a nondestructive trigger for AD is demonstrated. Since previously proposed pressure-sensitive fasteners face considerable drawbacks upon implementation in electronic products due to the ongoing trend of miniaturization, a second generation of pressure-based active fasteners is developed. Evaluation of these fasteners by means of axiomatic design techniques and prototyping demonstrates that the presented snap-fits, which make use of a closed-cell elastomer foam, are most robust. Subsequently, the contraction forces that closed-celled foams can exert as a function of an increase in ambient air pressure are experimentally determined. Furthermore, the implementation of pressure-sensitive foam-based snap-fits in both a modem and a payment terminal is described. Results of these experiments demonstrate that the contraction force of a cross-linked metallocene polyethylene closed-cell foams can reach up to 6 N/cm(2) at an overpressure of 2 bar and that the foam-based snap-fits can be released at a pressure increase of 2 bar.