Evaluation method of maintenance operation space based on virtual reality

In order to ensure the excellent maintainability of the product, it is necessary to give full consideration to the operation space of the maintenance personnel at design time. The traditional evaluation method of the operation space is that gives qualitative evaluation results and puts forward suggestions based on the virtual maintenance simulation animation and the digital prototype while comparing with rules of maintainability design by experts. The evaluation result usually depends on the expert level with subjective tendency. There is still a lack of widely used quantitative evaluation methods. This paper analyzes the main attitude of maintenance personnel in maintenance activities, evaluates their comfort level, and then evaluates the operation space. First of all, through the analysis of the characteristics of maintenance activities, the article draws the main factors of human comfort evaluation. Based on the artificial potential field theory commonly used in robot obstacle avoidance path planning, a reachability potential field that can be used to describe the upper limb posture of maintenance personnel is established and a criterion for evaluating upper limb comfort is proposed. Then, combined with the virtual maintenance technology, using the virtual maintenance simulation platform, together with a comprehensive analysis of tool rotation angle, operation space ratio and the hand swept volume of maintenance posture, the comfort of the maintenance staff ’s hand gesture is analyzed. After that, the above two parts are combined to comprehensively evaluate the comfort degree of the human body posture and give the evaluation criteria. And a new operation space evaluation method for the key maintenance steps in the maintenance operation process is established. In the end, the maintenance and disassembly process of an engine is taken as an example to verify the validity of this method.