A systematic review of environmentally conscious product design

Composite materials are an attractive material choice as they enable lightweight, low-maintenance products with a long lifespan. Recycling these materials, however, remains a challenge. Homogeneous material composition and the use of thermoset matrices complicate reprocessing, and result in low-grade recyclate. This means that closing the loop for these materials in a circular economy remains challenging, especially for glass fibre-reinforced thermoset composites. For a circular economy, products need to be designed to preserve product functionality, material properties, and economic value for as long as possible. However, recovery strategies, design aspects and their interconnectedness are currently largely unexplored for products containing fibre-reinforced polymers. The aim of this study was to identify circular strategies and determine design aspects for products containing composites. To achieve this, we conducted a systematic literature review and consulted experts. The circular strategies are largely similar to generic circular economy strategies as far as product integrity is concerned. However, on a material level, we identified additional approaches, the most notable of which is structural reuse, which preserves the material quality and thereby value. The design aspects were clustered and positioned along the product design process to support implementation. Finally, the strategies and design aspects we identified were brought together in a framework to support product design and design research for products containing composite materials in the context of a circular economy.

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“…Read titles & abstracts Result [29,32,54,58,79,80] Table A4. Expanding literature set through snowballing; resulting publications.…”

Section: Selectmentioning

confidence: 99%

Circular Design of Composite Products: A Framework Based on Insights from Literature and Industry

2021

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“…Being environmental conscious is one of the vital requirements in new product design and development today [1]. Environmental aspects and life cycle limitations integrate with customer requirements are crucial at the early stage of product design process [2]. There is more flexibility in dealing with changes and improvements to the product during this preliminary phase.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conceptual Design and Selection of Natural Fibre Reinforced Biopolymer Composite (NFBC) Takeout Food Container

Salwa¹,

Sapuan²,

Mastura³

et al. 2021

Journal of Renewable Materials

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Biopolymer composite has gained huge attention for its beneficial properties such as biodegradable and less impact to the environment. This consequently would diminish the dependency on the petroleum-based polymer. Abundance of studies have been done on the development and characterization of biopolymer composite materials for food packaging application, but work on the conceptual design of biopolymer composite packaging product is hardly found. Using the Kano Model, Quality Function Deployment for Environment (QFDE), morphological map, and Analytic Hierarchy Method (AHP) framework combination, this paper presents the conceptual design of a natural fibre reinforced biopolymer composites take-out food container. To understand customer satisfaction with the current use of takeout food containers, the Kano model was applied, and the findings were integrated into QFDE. The highest weight of voices of customer and environment (VOCE) as the solution parameters for the design characteristics were later refined using the aid of morphological chart (MC) to systematically develop conceptual designs. Lastly, AHP was utilized to pick the final concept design. The concept design with the highest score (8.3%) was chosen as the final conceptual design.

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“…The scientific literature is rich in methods that deal with environmental performance indicators' classification when ecodesigning projects (Daniel and Talaei-Khoei, 2016;Li et al, 2015). The most frequent ones are generally ANP (analytical network process), AHP (analytical hierarchy process), TOPSIS (Preferably technique of order by similarity with the ideal solution), and DEMATEL (decision-making testing and evaluation laboratory).…”

Section: General Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identification of Perceived Relationships Between Environmental Performance Indicators in Ecodesign Projects: The Case of Rail Infrastructure Projects

et al. 2023

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Sharing information between stakeholders is a critical success factor for ecodesign projects. This sharing is based on indicators that can be interrelated, i.e., impacting each other.This article focuses on the perception of environmental performance indicators’ relationships during the design phase of projects. It uses a DEMATEL approach combined with a graph-database visualization linking environmental performance indicators. While the DEMATEL approach highlights the critical environmental indicators, the graph-based visualization maps the primary interrelations of these factors and defines the best scale to manage them. The novelty here lies in the complementary use of these two methods to facilitate environmental project monitoring.This research is applied to rail infrastructure projects. The main results insist on land optimization, landscape insertion, carbon footprint, economic benefits, and biodiversity measures as critical factors when designing these projects. The graph-based visualization maps the main oriented links between indicators, allowing managers to identify the gaps between the perceived knowledge and the ground truth, facilitating their project monitoring.

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A systematic review of environmentally conscious product design

Cited by 7 publications

References 113 publications

Circular Design of Composite Products: A Framework Based on Insights from Literature and Industry

Circular Design of Composite Products: A Framework Based on Insights from Literature and Industry

Conceptual Design and Selection of Natural Fibre Reinforced Biopolymer Composite (NFBC) Takeout Food Container

Identification of Perceived Relationships Between Environmental Performance Indicators in Ecodesign Projects: The Case of Rail Infrastructure Projects

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