Furniture Design Ideas

Material property charts were introduced in Chapter 6. They are of two types: bar charts and bubble charts. A bar chart is simply a plot of one or a group of properties; Chapter 6 has several of them. Bubble charts plot two properties or groups of properties. Constraints and objectives can be plotted on them. […]

Selecting materials involves seeking the best match between design require­ments and the properties of the materials that might be used to make the Selecting a material for a portable bike shed. The requirements are expressed as constraints and objectives (objectives in blue). Records containing data for materials are screened using the constraints and ranked by […]

You need a new car. To meet your needs it must be a midsized four-door family car with a petrol engine delivering at least 150 horsepower—enough to tow your sailboat. Given all of these requirements, you want the car to cost as little to own and run as possible (see Figure 8.1, left side). There […]

E.7.11. Repeat the analysis of the PET bottle for the Alpure water case, the first case study in the chapter, entering data from Table 7.1 using the CES eco-audit tool. Then repeat, replacing the PET bottle by a glass one, using the additional information in Exercise E.7.2. E.7.12. Carry out the eco-audit for the PP […]

E.7.1. If the embodied energies and CO2 used in the Alpure water case study in the chapter are uncertain by a factor of ±25%, do the conclusions change? Mark ±25% margins onto each bar in a copy of Figure 7.3 (you are free to copy it) and then state your case. E.7.2. Alpure water has […]

The CES Edu software includes, as standard, an eco-audit tool. The double spread of Figure 7.12 is a mock-up of the user interface. It shows the user actions and the consequences. There are five steps, labelled 1 to 5. Actions and inputs are shown on the left in red. 1. Product definition allows entry of […]

An eco-audit guides decision making during design or redesign of a product and it points to the aspects of design that a fuller LCA should examine. Early in the design process, the detailed information required for a rigorous LCA is not available, and even if it were, the formal LCA methods are sufficiently burdensome to […]

Now we move up in scale a second time. Wind energy (see the Chapter 10 title page figure) is attractive in a number of ways. It is renewable, it is not dependent on fuel supplies from diminishing resources sited in coun­tries other than your own, it does not pose a threat in the hands of […]

Here we move up in scale. Argonne National Laboratory, working with the U. S. Department of Energy, has developed a model (GREET) to eval­uate energy and emissions associated with vehicle life. Table 7.9 lists the Table 7.9 Material content of a conventional family car and one made of lightweight materials Material Conventional ICE vehicle, kg […]

The bumpers of a car are heavy; reducing their weight can save fuel. Here we explore the replacement of a low alloy steel bumper with one of equal 8 X 103 0 FIGURE 7.10 family car. performance made from an age-hardening aluminum alloy, on a gasoline – powered family car. The steel bumper weighs 14 […]