Sustainable Engineering Products and Manufacturing Technologies

By Kaushik Kumar, Divya Zindani and J. Paulo Davim

Sustainable Engineering Products and Manufacturing Technologies provides the reader with a detailed look at the latest research into technologies that reduce the environmental impacts of manufacturing. All points where engineering decisions can influence the environmental sustainability of a product are examined, including the sourcing of non-toxic, sustainable raw materials, how to choose manufacturing processes that use energy responsibly and minimize waste, and how to design products to maximize reusability and recyclability. The subject of environmental regulation is also addressed, with references to both the US and EU and the future direction of legislation.

Finally, sustainability factors are investigated alongside other product considerations, such as quality, price, manufacturability and functionality, to help readers design processes and products that are economically viable and environmentally friendly.

• Helps readers integrate product sustainability alongside functionality, manufacturability and cost
• Describes the latest technologies for energy efficient and low carbon manufacturing
• Discusses relevant environmental regulations around the globe and speculates on future directions

• Language: English
• Publisher: Academic Press
• Release date: May 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9780128166413

Book preview

52+).

Preface

Kaushik Kumar, Divya Zindani and J. Paulo Davim

Mass production, consumption, and waste in industrialized/urbanized societies have a profound effect on the planet’s living systems and vital resources. There has been a dramatic increase in the concentration of CO2 in the environment. The kneeling curve delineates that the concentration of CO2 has reached 410 ppm in 2018 in comparison to 315 ppm in 1958. The consequences are the strong greenhouse effects. Hence, in recent years, sustainable manufacturing operations have drawn attention for academia and practitioners. Sustainable manufacturing, a strategy for the development of new products, is defined by the US Department of Commerce (2007) as the creation of manufactured products that use processes that minimize negative environmental impacts, conserve energy and natural resources, are safe for employees, communities, and consumers and are economically sound.

The integration of environmental requirements throughout the entire lifetime of products needs a new way of thinking and new decision tools that need to be applied. Thus sustainable manufacturing involves green product design, green procurement, green technology, and green production. In last two decades, manufacturing practices have slowly moved from traditional manufacturing, which was focused on cost, quality, delivery, and flexibility to sustainable manufacturing which targets a balance between environmental, social, and economic dimensions to satisfy stakeholders and to achieve a competitive advantage.

Therefore the two main focuses of the 21st century have been on the environment and the optimum utilization of the resources. Design and innovation have the potential to regenerate the natural environment and community culture while enhancing the value of products/services to business, customers, and society in general. To meet emerging scientific/technological challenges associated with sustainability, new design thinking, methods, and tools is required.

This has called for designing of green products and the use of green manufacturing technologies that have become strategically important for the different production and manufacturing industries around the world. Green or sustainable products are a solution to meet the environmental needs as well as ensuring the quality to the customer. These are the means to achieve harmony of natural environment, social culture, and economic development. In the design for environment process, designers may look at the source, makeup, and toxicity of raw materials; the energy and resources required for manufacturing the product; and how the product can be recycled or reused at the end of its life. Balanced with other product considerations such as quality, price, producibility, and functionality, the eco-designed products are environmentally and economically viable alternatives to traditional products. Smart sustainable design creates products that use less energy and natural resources, products that can be recycled easily or reused, and products that promote energy and materials efficiency in consumers’ lives.

Various regulations are nudging sustainable design concepts to the forefront of many designers’ and product developers’ minds: several European countries require manufacturers to take the products back from consumers at the end of the product’s life, creating an incentive for manufacturers to design products for easy recycling or reuse. Initiatives in the United States include the Extended Product Responsibility concept, which spreads responsibility for a product’s environmental impact along the chain from designer to manufacturer to distributor to retailer. Future legislation will push for products that have built-in end-of-life options, requiring designers and manufacturers to take the responsibility for how a product is dealt with at its end.

However, the production of sustainable products should also entail sustainable technologies, and therefore, the traditional manufacturing methods need to be converted to sustainable conserving machines that benefit the environment as a whole. Sustainable manufacturing, thus, is a method of manufacturing that minimizes waste and pollution achieved through the research and process design. It is also a method that supports and sustains a renewable way of producing products and/or services that do not harm us or the environment. These manufacturing goals are also to conserve natural resources for future generations. The benefit of sustainable manufacturing is to create a great reputation to the public, save useless cost, and promote research and design.

The main objective of the book is dedicated to sustainable engineering products and manufacturing technologies and is targeted to cater the needs of all academics students, researchers and industry practitioners, engineers, research, and scientists/academicians who are involved in the development and design of sustainable engineering products and associated manufacturing technologies.

These chapters in the book have been categorized in two sections, namely, Section I: Sustainable Manufacturing Processes and Section II: Sustainable Engineering Products.

Section I contains Chapters 1–4, whereas Section II contains Chapters 5–9.

Section I starts with Chapter 1, Microwave material processing: a clean, green, and sustainable approach, which discusses about microwave material processing as a clean, green, and sustainable process. The chapter emphasizes on various manufacturing operations such as joining, sintering, drilling, cladding, and casting by the use of microwave energy. The chapter demonstrates the working phenomenon in detail, the effect of process parameters, and numerous possibilities in the industrial applications which can be implemented in the near future.

Chapter 2, Thixoforming of light-weight alloys and composites: an approach toward sustainable manufacturing, provides an insight to a forming process known as Thixoforming. The chapter aims at classifying the currently available semisolid metal processing technologies (SSMP) and presents a comprehensive review of the potential mechanisms that lead to microstructural alterations during the production of feedstock material. Keeping in mind the current needs of the automobile and allied industries, the review of state-of-the-art is focused on Thixoforming with an emphasis on aluminum-based alloys and composites. Focus has been drawn on two major SSMP routes—Rheo-casting and Thixoforming—highlighting the potential benefits and industrial applications. Nondendritic microstructural evolution in the semisolid range and its beneficial effects have also been emphasized. Moreover, the chapter also presents the optimized solution for sustainable manufacturing.

Chapter 3, Experimental and numerical analysis of Al–Cu sheets using hydraulic bulging process, elaborates on a novel manufacturing process, hydraulic bulging process. The aim of the present chapter is to examine the strain behavior of different sheets by using bulge data variables, for example, pressure, height, time, and pole thickness. The experimentation was performed on single Cu sheet, Cu–Zn sheet and double layer Al–Cu and Cu–Cu sheets to obtain strain behavior. During experimentation surface, morphology was studied using SEM. Finally, the finite element analysis has been carried out using ANSYS to compare numerical results and experimental results of stress-strain rate.

Chapter 4, Hybrid welding of 304 austenitic stainless steel, the last chapter of Section I, enlightens the readers with another new manufacturing process, hybrid welding. Hybridization of TIG (Tungsten Inert Gas) and MIG (Metal Inert Gas) welding was done on 304 austenitic stainless steel which has extraordinary properties and wider application compared to other choices of steels due to excellent mechanical properties. The impacts of process parameters such as welding current and welding process on the mechanical properties of the welded joints were explored for all the three kinds of butt weld joint. Optical examinations were done on the weld zone, transition zone, and heat affected zone in order to evaluate the impact of the welding parameters and procedure on the weld quality.

Chapter 5, Design and construction of helical anchors in soils, which commences Section II, concentrates on design and construction of helical anchors, a product used for geotechnical applications, for example, soil excavation. It has wide civil engineering applications. In general, anchors applied in can be categorized by different methods. One of the best categories is grouting anchors and mechanical anchors. Grouting anchors are anchors which need injection of grout and can be categorized as strand, bar, hollow bar where as mechanical anchors can be helical anchors, plate anchors, and direct embedment anchors. Each type of anchors is aimed at transmission of load to a greater depth of the foundation of transmission towers, sea walls, retaining walls, etc. The chapter deals with the application of helical anchors. Helical anchor is the type of anchors installed by rotation of its central shaft. Thus it does not need excavation of borehole or trench. The chapter deals extensively on sustainable design and construction of helical anchors.

In Chapter 6, Design and analysis of heat exchanger by using CFD, and Chapter 7, A CFD-based study of cross-flow turbine for tidal energy extraction, the application of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has been utilized in developing a sustainable design of an engineering product.

In Chapter 6, Design and analysis of heat exchanger by using CFD, CFD is applied by considering mechanical and thermal properties of wall and flow fluid in a shell and tube type heat exchanger. The vertical baffles are taken in consideration in designing and simulation to get sustainable