環境を考慮した製品の材料選択

抄録

A rationalized methodology focusing on environmentally conscious materials selection for product design is described. This is a well-tailored application of the famous methodology for materials selection in mechanical design built by M. F. Ashby. A new value, environmental performance, is defined as the ‘product performance per its environmental impact’ in order to make a productive method, and is introduced into practical design process as well as a conventional value, cost performance. A case study on materials selection for TV’s front cabinet is presented to show the method’s effectiveness. According to the study magnesium alloys can be used for the component instead of the conventional material, polystyrene-fireproof in compound aspects of performance, cost and impact. An environmental impacts database of engineering materials to support the methodology is quite important and being created. A further approach on the development of a tool using a trial database for the efficient evaluation of materials is also presented. This software has a couple of benefits for average designers such as automatically creating of the performance indices and value functions, and its menu system to designate the design and value conditions is really easy and swift to use even if not having professional knowledge. The case study on head arms of hard disk drives makes it clear that the tool is valuable to create green products, particularly in the early stage of design process.