Sustainable Life Cycle Design Research Articles

Sustainable life cycle design aspects: how aware are material scientists?

When developing new materials many aspects of sustainability are relevant, especially when the ultimate goal is mass production. More efficient energy storage and transmission are important parts of a larger product life cycle design and the confines of the circular economy, including environmental and social concerns. For example, due to environmental, geopolitical, and health concerns, it is important to choose materials that are easily accessible, as opposed to materials requiring complicated extraction, storage, and transportation methods. Equally important is the abundance of the material, as the mass production and use of a product are not sustainable if its raw components are scarce. This requires material scientists to be aware of how their design affects the later life cycle stages of the materials they develop. Very few studies cover whether material scientists take these type of questions into consideration. To resolve this, material scientists were questioned on various sustainability aspects. Results show that most of the questioned scientists have little to no awareness of what effects mass production of their developed materials might have regarding greenhouse gases or the workforce, or what their material’s recyclability or longevity might be. The results indicate that these questioned material scientists are not fully aware of several imperative sustainability aspects and do not fully consider the impacts of their designs. To increase instilling and evaluating awareness of sustainability aspects on life cycle design, two improvements are: increasing sustainability education by lifelong learning, and adding sustainability concerns as a required component to grants and funding.

Reliability-based maintenance optimization of corrosion preventive designs under a life cycle perspective

Sustainability is of paramount importance when facing the design of long lasting, maintenance demanding structures. In particular, a sustainable life cycle design for concrete structure exposed to aggressive environments may lead to significant economic savings, and to reduced environmental consequences. The present study evaluates 18 different design alternatives for an existing concrete bridge deck exposed to chlorides, analyzing the economic and environmental impacts associated with each design as a function of the maintenance interval chosen. Results are illustrated in the context of a reliability-based maintenance optimization on both life cycle costs and life cycle environmental impacts. Maintenance optimization results in significant reductions of life cycle impacts if compared to the damage resulting from performing the maintenance actions when the end of the service life of the structure is reached. The use of concrete with 10% silica fume has been shown to be the most effective prevention strategy against corrosion of reinforcement steel in economic terms, reducing the life cycle costs of the original deck design by 76%. From an environmental perspective, maintenance based on the hydrophobic treatment of the concrete deck surface results in the best performance, allowing for a reduction of the impacts associated with the original design by 82.8%.

Visual Analytics Tools for Sustainable Lifecycle Design: Current Status, Challenges, and Future Opportunities.

The rapid rise in technologies for data collection has created an unmatched opportunity to advance the use of data-rich tools for lifecycle decision-making. However, the usefulness of these technologies is limited by the ability to translate lifecycle data into actionable insights for human decision-makers. This is especially true in the case of sustainable lifecycle design (SLD), as the assessment of environmental impacts, and the feasibility of making corresponding design changes, often relies on human expertise and intuition. Supporting human sense-making in SLD requires the use of both data-driven and user-driven methods while exploring lifecycle data. A promising approach for combining the two is through the use of visual analytics (VA) tools. Such tools can leverage the ability of computer-based tools to gather, process, and summarize data along with the ability of human-experts to guide analyses through domain knowledge or data-driven insight. In this paper, we review previous research that has created VA tools in SLD. We also highlight existing challenges and future opportunities for such tools in different lifecycle stages-design, manufacturing, distribution & supply chain, use-phase, end-of-life, as well as life cycle assessment. Our review shows that while the number of VA tools in SLD is relatively small, researchers are increasingly focusing on the subject matter. Our review also suggests that VA tools can address existing challenges in SLD and that significant future opportunities exist.

Sustainable Life Cycle Design Using Constraint Satisfaction Problems and Quality Function Deployment

In many ecodesign problems, finding solutions that complete the design requirements while bettering multiple performances (environmental impacts, costs, etc.) is no trivial task. Design-aid tools using optimization methods are efficient to address these issues but fail to encompass the whole life cycle of products and customer attractiveness aspects. This article describes an original method using CSP optimization and QFD to generate an optimized model of a product during the early design stages. Scores from the QFD matrix are used to weight the sub objectives of the optimization so that the solving is strongly dependent on the customers’ demands. As a consequence, the method allows a better integration of customer needs during the design process. To optimize multiple performances, the variables of the model are used to create impact functions corresponding to environmental impacts, costs, etc. of every life cycle phases of the product's parts. As a result, the optimized model is the one with the best performance scores while answering best the variety of customers’ needs. The methodology is applied to the design of an innovative inflatable dinghy. Results show that the use of QFD generates a fewer improvement of the environmental performance compared to an environmentally focused optimization (10% vs 18%) but it guarantees that the product will better meet customers’ needs. Hence, the product should more likely be accepted and purchased and have a positive impact on the performances of the whole market.

Integrated Sustainable Life Cycle Design: A Review

Product design is one of the most important sectors influencing global sustainability, as almost all the products consumed by people are outputs of the product development process. In particular, early design decisions can have a very significant impact on sustainability. These decisions not only relate to material and manufacturing choices but have a far-reaching effect on the product’s entire life cycle, including transportation, distribution, and end-of-life logistics. However, key challenges have to be overcome to enable eco-design methods to be applicable in early design stages. Lack of information models, semantic interoperability, methods to influence eco-design thinking in early stages, measurement science and uncertainty models in eco-decisions, and ability to balance business decisions and eco-design methodology are serious impediments to realizing sustainable products and services. Therefore, integrating downstream life cycle data into eco-design tools is essential to achieving true sustainable product development. Our review gives an overview of related research and positions early eco-design tools and decision support as a key strategy for the future. By merging sustainable thinking into traditional design methods, this review provides a framework for ongoing research, as well as encourages research collaborations among the various communities interested in sustainable product realization.