Development of a Recommendation Tool Identifying Environmental Sustainability Potential of Additive Manufacturing
Typ
Examensarbete för masterexamen
Master's Thesis
Master's Thesis
Program
Applied mechanics (MPAME), MSc
Publicerad
2023
Författare
Karlsson, Emma
Simonsen, Alexandra
Modellbyggare
Tidskriftstitel
ISSN
Volymtitel
Utgivare
Sammanfattning
This master’s thesis aims to support Volvo Penta in reaching their sustainability
goals by exploring the environmental sustainability advantages of metal additive
manufacturing (AM). This is achieved by creating a recommendation tool, which
intends to identify the environmental sustainability potential of AM for components.
The project methodology consisted of three phases: exploration study, development
of the recommendation tool, and testing and evaluation. During the first phase, AM
knowledge was obtained through a literature review and interviews. In the second
phase, the structure, criteria, scoring and recommendations of the recommendation
tool were developed. In the last phase, the usability and performance of the recom mendation tool were tested.
The main result from the exploration study was the environmental sustainability
advantages of AM identified for the product life cycle phases. Five component
categories were created to capture these advantages, namely design and function,
customisation or small series, material reduction, manufacturing process, and supply chain. The final recommendation tool consisted of three parts, one for briefly
describing the components, one for eliminating non feasible components and one for
evaluating the components. The elimination was based on requirements connected
to AM buildability for binder jetting and powder bed fusion, while the evaluation criteria were based on the identified sustainability advantages divided into the
component categories. The result of the recommendation tool is a mean score for
each component category and corresponding recommendations. The usability test
indicated that engineering judgement based criteria depend highly on the users’
perception and experience of AM and the component. The evaluation indicates a
strong correlation between AM expert opinions and the recommendation tool results
Beskrivning
Ämne/nyckelord
additive manufacturing, environmental sustainability, product develoment, recommendation tool, binder jetting