Colloquia

Summary

This thesis has set out to formulate and evaluate a reverse engineering and redesign method tailored to oil/gas separators, which are enclosed, pressurized vessels that contain with a flammable mixture of oil and gas. Reverse engineering is the process of learning from existing products. For mechanical engineering purposes, this process often involves the product experimentation and product disassembly. However, in cases such as the one considered in this study, these may be undesirable.

The tailored method, therefore, does not require experimentation or disassembly. Instead, it relies on information from literature and suppliers to create models that represent the product’s functional sections and their behavior. This method is evaluated by performing two case studies, which have shown the method’s usefulness to allow better understand the product and its functionality.