Archive:Design for the Environment

Welcome to the parent page for Design for the Environment (DFE).

This course is currently offered to third year mechanical engineering students at the University of Toronto (Canada).

The goal of the course is to provide students with the analysis tools and design strategies to design products that minimize their impact on the environment. The course focuses on a product’s overall environmental impact throughout its entire lifecycle. We focus on areas of particular relevance to Mechanical Engineering such as: product design, materials, energy conservation and recovery, manufacturing topics, automotive issues and air pollution.

As part of the course, students carry out a through comparison of three design alternatives that fulfil the same practical purpose. Their study includes:

• Functional analysis
• Streamlined life-cycle analysis (environmental impacts)
• Hybrid (EIO-LCA/traditional) life-cycle analysis (a second tool to gauge environmental impacts)
• Cost analysis
• Societal analysis

For an introduction to environmental life-cycle analysis of products and processes (LCA), see Life cycle assessement.

Some groups decide to do a final oral presentations, whereas others will be posting a summarized version of their reports on Wikiversity. You will find the links to these report pages on this page.

Links to Winter 2008 Projects

Section 1

• DFE2008 Interior panels click on this sample report page for more information
• DFE2008 Office Chair Foam
• DFE2008 Residential Roofing Materials

Section 2

• DFE2008 Grocery Bags
• DEF2008 Off-Grid Electricity for Cottage Owner

--SRego 18:55, 19 March 2008 (UTC)