Development of a voxel-based CAD system for upstream life cycle design and its application to LCA

Abstract

The comprehensive design of product life cycles is a promising approach to realizing circular manufacturing systems. However, design support systems that can be used for the life cycle design during upstream stages have not been established. The purpose of this study is to develop an easy-to-use CAD system for the early stages of product life cycle design. The system supports creating a product model in voxel format and a life cycle process model as a process network in an integrated manner. The voxel models make it easy to create the rough shape of products and quantify the mass of each component for LCA. An LCD monitor's life cycle was designed using the proposed CAD tool. Fourteen design candidates were created and LCA was performed to compare the designs from the perspective of life cycle environmental impact. Through the case study, we confirmed that the tool is a practical system that can quantitatively examine what design improvements contributed to the reduction of environmental impact at an early design stage before creating detailed 3D-CAD models.