LT: GMIP - Green Machining Incremental Planner, A Distributed Environmental Advisor for Mechanical Components and Machining Systems

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9814319 Sheng The objective of this research is to develop an interactive environmental-based design advisor for machined parts. While there is much work underway on developing standards for life-cycle assessment, there is still a significant need to bridge the domains of environmental assessment and the detailed design decisions made during product development in an interactive way. The nature of data collection in life-cycle assessment methods limits their role as a real-time advisor during product design. In particular, a real-time design advisor is needed to perform "what if" scenarios for product development, as well as to serve as an easily accessible training tool for design engineers. One area in which the trade-off between environmental and production factors are of major concern is metalworking, where regulations concerning emissions and occupational health and safety factors affect the selection of cutting fluids, tooling and processes. However, product design has been largely decoupled from the facility-level decisions of production, even though design of components is a main driver for process selection. This research will develop a planning tool for machine shop operation that combines three aspects of environmentally-conscious manufacturing and design: (1) a design advisor for evaluating the energy and multi-dimensional hazard potential of a component design, (2) a cutting fluid planning module that models dynamic performance degradation and multi-dimensional deterioration in different classes of cutting fluids based on components, and (3) a facility-level planner to simulate the flow of multiple product types through a facility to evaluate maintenance strategies. A proof-of-concept design-for-environment tool will be developed that links energy and mass balance models for machining processes with a health hazard assessment method within a feature-based computer-aided design environment. Case studies for several machined automotive components will be analyzed and compared with shop data. This grant is made pursuant to the joint NSF/Lucent Technologies Industrial Ecology Research Fellowships Program 1998.***