The New Jersey Institute of Technology's
Electronic Theses & Dissertations Project

Title:	Integration of multi lifecycle assessment and design for environment database using relational moddel concepts
Author:	Suratran, Bhagyashree
View Online:	njit-etd2000-086 (xiii, 118 pages ~ 12.6 MB pdf)
Department:	Department of Computer and Information Science
Degree:	Master of Science
Program:	Computer Science
Document Type:	Thesis
Advisory Committee:	Kurfess, Franz J. (Committee co-chair) Caudill, Reggie J. (Committee co-chair) Lue, Qian Hing (Committee member)
Date:	2000-01
Keywords:	Life cycle assessment. Industrial ecology --Computer programs. Commercial products --Environmental aspects. Product life cycle --Environmental aspects.
Availability:	Unrestricted
Abstract:	Multi-lifecycle Assessment (MLCA) systematically considers and quantifies the consumption of resources and the environmental impact associated with a product or process. Design challenges posed by a multi-lifecycle strategy are significantly more complex than traditional product design. The designer must look forward in time to maximize the product's end-of-life yield of assemblies, parts and materials while looking backward to the world of existing products for feedstock sources for the current design. As MLCA and DEE share some common data items, such as, part geometry, material and manufacturing process, it is advantageous to integrate the database for MLCA and DEE. The integration of CAD/DEE and MLCA database will provide not only to designers but also for dernanufacturer and MLCA analyst to play an active role in achieving the vision of sustainability. The user of MLCA software has to provide a significant amount of information manually about a product for which the environmental burdens are being analyzed, which is an error prone activity. To avoid the manual work and associative problems, a MLCA-CAD interface has been developed to progranmtatically populate the MLCA database by using the Bill of Material (BOM) information in the CAD software. This MLCA-CAD interface provides a flow of information from design software (DEE/CAD) to MLCA software.