1,721,223 research outputs found
Eco-design and Eco-materials: An interactive and collaborative approach
No full textSustainability and recycling have come to be keywords in many consumer products. However, the creative industry still lacks design tools suitable for sustainable development. While different recycled and sidestream materials are available in industry, the relation between sustainability and the use of new composites is still difficult to be evaluated and integrated into the early design phases for the creative area. This paper deals with a collaborative Eco-design approach to support these tasks and overcome traditional limits using an interactive approach. The interaction regards the collaboration between several stake-holders such as designers, manufacturers and suppliers throughout the engineering activities and value stream. The framework of an Eco-design tool is proposed to evaluate secondary raw materials, processes, user's feedback, and best practices for the selection of green and recycled materials
An Approach for the Responsible Design of the Packaging Employed in Household Appliances
No full textThe packaging is responsible for the production of a great amount of waste in the world. Every product comes with different levels of packaging to protect the product during shipping, store the content in the warehouse, and show the product to customers in retail shops. Therefore, the designer of packaging is more and more involved in a responsible analysis while defining the package configurations for a product. This paper proposes an approach to support the packaging configurations considering life cycle data, analytical structural analysis, and parametric cost modeling. Rules, formulas, and specific standards are formalized into a Knowledge Base. As a case study, the methodological approach has been applied to design the packaging of a household appliance. The results show the possibility to reduce the cost and environmental impacts of packaging by a responsible approach
Knowledge Based Plants Layout Configuration and Piping Routing
No full textThe design of industrial plants requires managing many geometrical and non geometrical data to reach a satisfactory solution in terms of costs, performance and quality. An approach is presented to support designers in the elicitation and formalization phase of the required knowledge. Then an integral prototypal software application accomplishes layout configuration tasks through a customized graphic wizard. A routing algorithm is presented to automate calculation and modelling of piping and electrical cables respecting design constraints. Cogeneration plant powered by micro gas-turbines has been chosen as test case to evaluate the proposed design method and tool
Design approaches for Li-ion battery packs: A review
No full textNowadays, battery design must be considered a multi-disciplinary activity focused on product sustainability in terms of environmental impacts and cost. The paper reviews the design tools and methods in the context of Li-ion battery packs. The discussion focuses on different aspects, from thermal analysis to management and safety. The paper aims to investigate what has been achieved in the last twenty years to understand current and future trends when designing battery packs. The goal is to analyze the methods for defining the battery pack's layout and structure using tools for modeling, simulations, life cycle analysis, optimization, and machine learning. The target concerns electric and hybrid vehicles and energy storage systems in general. The paper makes an original classification of past works defining seven levels of design approaches for battery packs. The final discussion analyzes the correlation between the changes in the design methods and the increasing demand for battery packs. The outcome of this paper allows the reader to analyze the evolutions of the design methods and practices in battery packs and to understand future developments
Manufacturing cost estimation during early phases of machine design
No full textMachine design process requires the effective and rapid assessment of different design solutions. Beyond functions and technical performance other parameters as safety, manufacturability, assemblability etc. have to be taken into account. Manufacturing cost is one of the main factors in order to choose the most suitable solution, so accurate estimation in the early design phases is fundamental. Design to cost implies to manage a vast amount of manufacturing knowledge that has to be linked to the design parameters. Feature based 3D CAD models contain data useful for cost estimation but, despite the numerous researches on features recognition and extraction, no cost estimation software system yet assures reliable results. In such context, this paper presents an approach for rapid manufacturing cost estimation where design features are automatically linked to manufacturing operations. The approach has been implemented into a knowledge-based system and tested on practical case studies in order to validate the performance. Copyright © 2002-2012 The Design Society. All rights reserved
Design tools for metal additive manufacturing: a critical and perspective overview
No full textMetal Additive Manufacturing is quite expensive and very different from traditional schemes. The possibility of realizing lightweight products with free-form shapes increases the interest in this technology in the industry. The main limitations of the widespread of Metal Additive Manufacturing concern the high cost of materials and 3D printers, and the necessity of post-processing activities. Additive Manufacturing generally claims different design constraints if compared to traditional manufacturing technologies. The improvements in 3D Metal Printing are increasing the design practices in Additive Manufacturing. The design workflow for Additive Manufacturing includes different tools and methods to manage the design complexity. These tools are CAD/CAE software, numerical simulations, database, etc. They mostly are the updated versions of already existing tools. Therefore, these tools are not directly developed to support the phases of Additive Manufacturing. The paper analyzes the main functionalities of Design for Metal Additive Manufacturing tools. The critical analysis suggests the necessity to improve the interactive practices between users and tools along the design workflow. A more interactive approach to design could reduce the gap between the definition of the part geometry and the parameter settings for the additive process
A methodological approach for supporting the thermal design of Li-ion battery for customized electric vehicles
No full textAn important issue in the mechanical industry is the reduction of the time to market, in order to meet quickly the customer needs. This goal is very important for SMEs that produce small lots of customized products. In the context of greenhouse gas emissions reduction, vehicles powered by electric motors seem to be the most suitable alternative to the traditional internal combustion engine vehicles. The market of customized electric vehicles is a niche market suitable for SMEs. Nowadays, the energy storage system of an electric vehicle powertrain consists of several Li-ion cells arranged in a container called battery pack. Particularly, the battery unit is considered as the most critical component in electric vehicle, because it impacts on performance and life cycle cost. Currently, the design of a battery pack mostly depends on the related market size. A longer design time is expected in the case of a large scale production. While a small customized production requires more agility and velocity in the design process. The proposed research focuses on a design methodology to support the designer in the evaluation of the battery thermal behavior. This work has been applied in the context of a customized small production. As test case, an urban electric light commercial vehicle has been analyzed. The designed battery layout has been evaluated and simulated using virtual prototyping tools. A cooling configuration has been analyzed and then prototyped in a physical vehicle. The virtual thermal behavior of a Li-ion battery has been validated at the test bench. The real operational conditions have been analyzed reproducing several ECE-15 driving cycles and many acceleration runs at different load values. Thermocouples have measured the temperature values during the physical experiments, in order to validate the analytical thermal profile evaluated with the proposed design approach
A Decision Tree approach for an early evaluation of 3D models in Design for Additive Manufacturing
No full textMetal Additive Manufacturing is an emergent production process that can realize geometries that are difficult to realize with traditional manufacturing techniques. The design rules and guidelines for Additive Manufacturing are different from the traditional approaches. One of the issues of Additive Manufacturing is the evaluation of the printability of the CAD model to be realized and the results in terms of residual stress and deformation. In the literature, there is a lack of tools and methods to rapidly evaluate the printability of the CAD models and predict the results in terms of residual stress and deformation. This paper proposes a Machine Learning-based method to confirm or not the printability of a 3D CAD model in the early design phase. This evaluation could reduce the errors during the printing phase. A Decision Tree classifier has been trained with virtual analysis. The dataset has been produced with CAD models, generated by a parametric approach, and numerical simulations used to evaluate the 3D printing output. A Knowledge-Based tool defines the list of parameters to be extracted from each CAD model. During the use of the proposed decision tool, the parameters are extracted from the CAD model and analyzed within the Decision Tree model
Analytical thermal model for characterizing a Li-ion battery cell
No full textIn a scenario of small and customized production of electric vehicle, it is important to set methods and tools to evaluate the Li-Ion cells heat source in EV battery. The main problem of the new lithium batteries is represented by the need to keep the battery packs at uniform and constant temperatures and avoid peaks of temperatures which cause degradation of performance and safety problem. The main issue concerns the characterization of a thermal model to calculate the heat generated by electrochemical reactions in a single battery cell. In order to achieve this objective, electrical tests have been conducted to obtain the parameters such as voltage curves, open circuit voltage, and capacity for different type of Li-Ion cells and different rate of current in charge and discharge. During experiments, the use of an IR camera allows to acquire real temperature data under working conditions. These tests concern one cell per time, analyzed in natural convection condition at constant external temperature. The heat generation is evaluated solving the analytical thermal formula which depends on the current rate. The approach has been validated comparing the calculated temperature values with experimental data. The proposed methodology allows to determine the heat generated and temperature for different working condition
A modular optimization method based on a multi-DOE approach proposed for a centrifugal impeller
No full textNowadays, design processes need of agile and flexible tools and methods to meet market needs and Ecodesign directive in the industry of household appliances. Virtual prototyping techniques are widespread in design processes and practices, in order to reduce the project development lead-time and the cost related to any real physical prototyping. The aim of this paper is the study of a generic modular approach to support the optimization process of simple mechanical parts using virtual prototyping tools and a multi-DOE solving analysis based on virtual experiments. The target is to increase flexibility in design phases. The research context regards the optimization of a blower for cooker hood applications, in order to improve the fluid dynamic efficacy indicator in accordance with EU Ecodesign directive regarding ventilation fans. The increasing of fluid dynamic efficiency is a way to reduce electrical energy consumption during blower operation. Particularly, this paper focuses on the design optimization of an impeller for kitchen hood. The research-work takes into account the optimization of the blade profile. Inlet and outlet fluid-blade angles have been analyzed and discussed. The methodology proposes the study of a set of geometrical parameters through an analysis based on DOE scheduling with virtual experiments. The proposed test case provides a study of two different fan wheel models for the same hood application. Three geometrical parameters have been considered. The DOE objective function fits the maximization of the fluid dynamic efficiency indicator, in order to reduce energy consumptions. A multi-DOE approach has been used to evaluate the best configuration set. Several CFD simulations have been conducted and the resultant impeller configuration has been also validated through physical tests
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