Open AccessFeasibility of forecasting ecological performances of products in early development phases
Author(s) -
Helen Luisa Hein,
J Schwarte
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
iop conference series. materials science and engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1757-899X
pISSN - 1757-8981
DOI - 10.1088/1757-899x/615/1/012108
Subject(s) - product (mathematics) , sustainability , computer science , production (economics) , scale (ratio) , environmental economics , new product development , resource (disambiguation) , climate change , interval (graph theory) , risk analysis (engineering) , life cycle assessment , consumption (sociology) , environmental science , phase (matter) , energy consumption , energy (signal processing) , industrial engineering , business , ecology , engineering , mathematics , economics , social science , macroeconomics , computer network , sociology , biology , geometry , quantum mechanics , marketing , statistics , physics , combinatorics , chemistry , organic chemistry
Sustainability, i.e. among other things climate change and resource consumption in the product development phase, have to be increasingly taken into account. The primary energy demand of products and their influence on the greenhouse effect can be scientifically analysed through life cycle assessments. For this purpose, all product, energy and material flows must be recorded in each individual product life phase. If, for some reason, no identifiable data is (yet) available, assumptions must be made whose uncertainties may later lead to deviations in the results, some of which are difficult to assess. This can pose a major problem, as many parameters have not yet been defined or will change in the early development phase such as the production scale. In order to be able to compare the products correctly with already established products, however, the possible changes must also be considered comprehensively. An extension of the established methodology by the concept of interval arithmetic makes it possible to determine the entire spectrum of all environmental impacts potentially occurring through the product, since the existing uncertainties are considered directly in the balancing. This is illustrated by the example of an aerogel-based thermal insulation composite system, the insulating material of which is evaluated.