An Integrated Approach to Information Modeling for the Sustainable Design of Products

Abstract

The design of more sustainable products can be best accomplished in a tradeoff-based design process that methodically handles conflicting objectives. Such conflicts are often seen between, environmental impact, cost, and product performance. To support such a process, we propose the development of an environment where sustainability considerations are explicitly introduced early into the design process. This explicitness is provided by integrating the requirements information of sustainability standards and regulations directly into the design process. The emergence of the semantic web provides an interoperable environment in which the context and meaning of knowledge about the relationships among various domains can be shared.This work presents an ontological framework designed to represent both the objectives that pertain to sustainable design and the applicable sustainability standards and regulations. This integrated approach not only can ease the adoption of the standards and regulations during a design process but can also influence a design toward sustainability considerations. The usefulness of this model integration is demonstrated by an illustrative brake disk rotor and pads case study. The results show that both the standards and criteria may be considered at early design stages by using this methodology. Furthermore, it can be used to capture, reveal, and propagate the design intent transparently to all design participants. RightsThis material is declared a work of the U.S. Government and is not subject to copyright protection in the United States. Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited. This material is declared a work of the U.S. Government and is not subject to copyright protection in the United States. Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited. ABSTRACTThe design of more sustainable products can be best accomplished in a tradeoff-based design process that methodically handles conflicting objectives. Such conflicts are often seen between, environmental impact, cost, and product performance. To support such a process, we propose the development of an environment where sustainability considerations are explicitly introduced early into the design process. This explicitness is provided by integrating the requirements information of sustainability standards and regulations directly into the design process. The emergence of the semantic web provides an interoperable environment in which the context and meaning of knowledge about the relationships among various domains can be shared.This work presents an ontological framework designed to represent both the objectives that pertain to sustainable design and the applicable sustainability standards and regulations. This integrated approach not only can ease the adoption of the standards and regulations during a design process but can also influence a design toward sustainability considerations. The usefulness of this model integration is demonstrated by an illustrative brake disk rotor and pads case study. The results s...

Towards the Synthesis of Product Knowledge Across the Lifecycle

“…Such an ontology can provide a foundation for extending lifecycle information with sustainability-specific information, such as that available in standards. This is shown by D'Alessio et al [62] when mapping sustainability standards to product information, and again by Eddy et al [63] as a means to incorporate sustainability information into early design time.…”

Interoperability of disparate engineering domain ontologies using basic formal ontology

“…Other work has focused ontologies describing different aspects of engineering design, modeling and innovation, including ontologies aiming to capture data relating to engineering models (Grosse, Milton-Benoit, and Wileden 2005), decision making (Rockwell et al 2009), usable design (Hagedorn, Krishnamurty, and Grosse 2016), laminated composite materials (Premkumar et al 2014), sustainable design (Eddy et al 2014), as well as a modular ontological framework for design (Eddy et al 2011) and multidisciplinary work using ontologies for annotating bio-models (McPherson et al 2013) and for medical device innovation (Hagedorn, Grosse, and Krishnamurty 2015).…”