Cost-constrained low-carbon product design

Abstract

Low-carbon design is a design process for a product with the consideration of greenhouse gas emissions during its entire life cycle, which has an essential effect on product carbon footprint. However, existing approaches for low-carbon product design are either inextensible to achieve low-carbon design solutions in product life cycle or prone to a loss of optimal solutions under the dual consideration of carbon footprint and cost in product life cycle. This paper is devoted to a systematic Lagrange Relaxation-based approach to cost-constrained low-carbon product design for product life cycle. After the calculation model of carbon footprint for product life cycle is proposed, network-based representation model for low-carbon product design under the consideration of carbon footprint and cost in product life cycle is proposed. A Lagrange Relaxation-based constrained shortest path algorithm is then applied to produce design solutions with the consideration of carbon footprint and cost in product life cycle. The cost-constrained low-carbon product design of cold heading machine tool is given as an example, which demonstrates that the methodology is helpful to produce valuable solutions with the dual consideration of product carbon footprint and cost in product life cycle.