Sustainable Green Design and Life Cycle Assessment for Engineering Education

Abstract

Green design and product life cycle assessments (LCA) help us to quantify and understand the actual impact on nature, society, and the economy. Recognizing the importance of sustainability analysis, many manufacturing industries are working to build an environment for practicing the concept of green design and LCA in product development and commercialization. To further strengthen the emerging interest, this paper describes the development of class project modules in the Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering (IMSE) department at The University of Texas at El Paso. The primary focus of these modules is to introduce the student to the concept of green design and LCA in the evaluation of the environmental impact of the manufacturing process. This enables a high interdisciplinary platform for research and class modules suitable to be used in the academic environment for hands-on student training. The modules are developed by thoroughly analyzing the skillsets required by the industrial needs. The module includes: 1) Introduction and theory of sustainable design; 2) Product design and development using CAD software; 3) sustainability analysis of the 3-D soft product model; 4) introduction and theory of life cycle assessment; and 5) life cycle assessment using GaBi software. SolidWorks sustainability tool and GaBi software are incorporated as the working platform of the aforementioned four modules. The effectiveness of the project modules is investigated by integrating them as special topics in the summer, 2020 course and measuring the student outcome using a rigorous pre- and post-student survey.