Product design from an environmental and critical raw materials perspective

Public policy has become increasingly stringent in response to environmental challenges, both global and local. In this scenario, materials play a crucial role in the innovation of environmentally responsible products. Design for environment can be identified as the effort to adjust the present design methods to correct known, measurable, environmental degradation. It should be applied in all the phases of the design process, such as the concept, embodiment and detailed analysis. Mostly, it needs to take into account an emerging drawback linked to those raw materials that are considered critical by European Union because of their high supply risk and economic importance. Alloys that minimise the environmental impact of a product may suffer of a supply risk because of the presence, inside them, of high mechanical properties inducing alloy critical elements. A multi-objective design approach is thus proposed that takes into account both the environmental impact reduction and the criticality issues linked to raw materials. The method is illustrated with an example.