This research thrust aims to advance design methods and tools to improve product economic, environmental, and social performance, simultaneously, as described below:

  • Early Product Design: Work with OSU faculty integrates life cycle analysis (LCA) and automated concept generation to facilitate sustainable design. Work with Penn State University and Wayne State University in NSF CI-TEAM and NSF CooL:SLiCE projects led to a cyber-collaboratory to support sustainable product design education.
  • Design for Manufacturing: Sustainability assessment remains deficient in process planning. With support from DOE, Boeing, NIST, and the Oregon Metals Initiative, various processes have been modeled to characterize sustainability metrics.
  • Sustainable Systems: Research with OSU faculty and Sheldon Manufacturing is integrating system dynamics and sustainable manufacturing for analysis of manufacturing system designs.

 

Some examples of student projects in this area include: