Multicriteria Optimization of Environmentally Conscious Mechanical Design Decisions
 
 

Charles I. Whitmer II | MS | 1995

ABSTRACT:

Recent economic and government changes have forced manufacturers to consider the post-use of their product. As a result, design methodologies have been developed to allow post-use processes to be completed with less effort. In these methodologies, there are many competing factors. This thesis presents a methodology for finding the factor or factors which will most improve the goal of the designer by finding a distribution of importances. This importance distribution is found through heirarchical analysis. The heirarchical analysis was developed using the results of a preliminary investigation completed where a washing machine was disassembled and its design was studied. The sensitivity of the results for the methodology was then tested. The results showed that the methodology was stable for both small and large changes in the input to the system.

A variey of concepts have been presented and discussed within this thesis. The first being Public and Private trends which are forcing designers to consider the use of post-use processes during the design stage. Evolved from these trends is the desire to implement post-use processes through design methodologies which provide competing alternatives to meet a specific design goal. Another concept covered involves a Hierarchical Multicriteria Optimization Methodology for choosing between these competing alternatives. Further, a perturbation theory is provided to test the robustness of the heirarchical Multicriteria Optimization Methodology.

If you have any comments or suggestions please e-mail jwsuther@mtu.edu.