The Alcoa Technical Center in southwestern Pennsylvania launched an investigation to find out. Its interest wasn't primarily to improve its own design process. Alcoa makes aluminum shapes from bauxite and other raw materials. Its goal was to find a tool that would convince OEM design engineers that aluminum is a better choice than other materials such as steel or plastics.
Researchers studied several tools, and the findings were reviewed by Stephen B. Leonard, Alcoa's Design and Innovation Practice Leader, at the 2011 International Forum on Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA) held in Wakefield, R.I., last month.
One example is SolidWorks Sustainability, a module that addresses environmental impact factors (air, carbon, energy, and water), and provides a basic assessment of transportation and manufacturing impacts.
"The trade-off with this approach is that the concepts need to be designed in the CAD system in order to assess the environmental impact," Leonard wrote in his paper. "Secondly, these designs need to have some level of robust manufacturing detail included (e.g., what type of process, what type of material). This forces a designer to make a decision on a material and process to design in CAD before getting an assessment on the relative impacts of the materials."
A company called Sustainable Minds offers a lifecycle assessment (LCA) tool that analyzes a product's bill of materials (BOM) at the early design stage. It's based on the "Tool for Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and other Environmental Impacts" standard, which was developed by the US Environmental Protection Agency for front-end LCA assessment.
Leonard's take: "The tool is useful for products already designed and categorized in a BOM, and can be an excellent complementary process to other environmental assessment methodologies."Leonard's team moved on to Boothroyd & Dewhurt's DFMA software, which includes an environmental module. The module "provided the type of data to adequately evaluate the merits of an assortment of product concepts from an environmental assessment perspective." DFMA also allows environmental analysis while a design is in process.
Leonard did not mention other commercial software options that are available, such as Eco Materials Adviser (EMA), which is currently provided free as part of Autodesk Inventor 2012.
Leonard's team selected a laptop computer (no brand or model data provided) for a case study in a pilot. DFMA provided them with a good sales pitch for aluminum as a replacement for molded plastic and other materials.
For example a switch to aluminum for shrouds, covers, and other parts in the laptop resulted in:
This is good stuff, and there is no question that aluminum is a good materials choice from a sustainability perspective. But the guts of the analysis weren't divulged, and I still have to wonder how fair the analysis is.
For example, it's generally easier to design complex shapes in a molded plastic that combines functions than it is to do the same in aluminum. Maybe I'm wrong. I phoned Stephen Leonard to discuss, but he wasn't available. Did the design analysis also consider use of sophisticated new fasteners that double as heat sinks?
And the definition of recyclability is also difficult and puzzling. Dare to say out loud that a material is not recyclable in the past 10 years, and the suppliers would quickly point out that their materials are recyclable -- even thermosets filled with 60 percent glass. Thermoplastics are more easily recyclable. But realistically: Is anyone really recycling plastics or aluminum from cast-off laptops? I know that they are collected and sent to safe disposal facilities. But what happens next has been a source of controversy.
So is the Alcoa project just a marketing gimmick, or a real advance in technology of interest to design engineers at large? Maybe some of both.
For more information about DFMA, please click here.
