Optimal product design for life cycle assessment (LCA) with the case study of universal motors

Though life cycle assessment can provide the analytic basis of environmental impact of products for engineering designers, it requires not only a significant amount of time but also a detailed bill of materials of the products to determine the optimal product designs. To overcome the barrier between life cycle assessment and design, in this paper, the optimal product design for life cycle assessment is studied. Instead of comparing a few design alternatives due to the barrier, design variables are allowed to vary as an optimization problem to minimize environmental impact. As a numerical example, the design of universal electric motors was demonstrated. Under the five different design cases, the optimal designs could be achieved to minimize the total environmental impact of universal motors.