Sustainable manufacturing: evaluation and modeling of environmental impacts in additive manufacturing

Abstract

Cleaner production and sustainability are of crucial importance in the field of manufacturing processes where great amounts of energy and materials are being consumed. Nowadays, additive manufacturing technologies such as Direct Additive Laser Manufacturing allow us to manufacture functional products with high added value. Insofar as environmental considerations become an important issue in our society, as well as legislation regarding environment become prominent (Normalization ISO 14 044), the environmental impact of those processes have to be evaluated in order to make easier its acceptance in the industrial world. Some studies have been conducted on electric consumption of machine tools (stand-by consumption, in process consumption, etc) but only a few studies take into account the whole existing environmental flows (material, fluids, electricity). This paper presents a new methodology where all flows consumed (material, fluids, electricity) are considered in the environmental impact assessment. This method coupled a global view required in a sustainable approach and an accurate evaluation of flows consumption in the machine. The methodology developed is based on a predictive model of flows consumption defined from the manufacturing path and CAD model of the part which will be produce. In order to get an accurate model of the process, each feature of the machine is modeled. The goal of this work is to integrate this model into the design loop for additive manufacturing parts.

Putting environmental technologies into the mainstream: Adoption of environmental technologies by medium-sized manufacturing firms in Brazil

“…2 manufacturing processes tend to consume great amounts of energy and materials (Liu et al, 2016;Le Bourhis et al, 2013). Actually, several authors have reaffirmed the central role manufacturing plays in the process of "greening" organizations (Dornfeld, 2014;Govindan et al, 2015).…”

Additive manufacturing – a sustainable manufacturing route

“…Any of these methods manufacturing only a part per week, but left on the rest of the time, could have higher impact than the same machine at maximal utilization [3,5].…”

“…A comprehensive analysis of sustainability must consider every step of the product life cycle, from raw materials to disposal at the end of product life, including manufacturing stage, when quantities of materials and energy are consumed [1][2][3]. Thus, green manufacturing is one step towards sustainable development ( Figure 1) [4].…”

Introducing Sustainability in Value Models to Support Design Decision Making: A Systematic Review

“…QChain allows users to draw a chain diagram of the production process under investigation, as well as to create scenarios through what-if analyses and compare them in the People-Planet-Profit framework. Le Bourhis et al [149] propose the use of a predictive model of flow consumption, defined from the manufacturing path and CAD model of the part which will be produced, to calculate the environmental impact assessment of a manufacturing plant. The method uses the Eco-Indicator 99 method, and the Eco-Indicator Point, to compare the environmental impacts due to material, fluid, and electrical consumption, which are not expressed in the same unit.…”