Sustainability-driven tolerancing and design optimization of an aircraft engine component

Paper in proceeding, 2013

Design for sustainability requires decision-makers to simultaneously consider the economic, ecological, and social consequences of their products and production processes for a broad range of stakeholders. While some choices may mutually benefit the three sustainability categories, there are often tradeoffs where improving one objective comes at a cost to another. Previous studies have shown that geometric tolerance decisions can affect all three sustainability criteria and create tradeoffs, particularly when they are made in conjunction with other design decisions. This paper presents a framework for analyzing product design decisions through a multi-objective optimization approach to sustainable design, tailored to the application of an aircraft engine turbine component. Models are constructed for production and maintenance costs, ecological impacts from manufacturing and use, and social impacts from neighborhood noise and delays caused by reliability-based maintenance events. Using advanced computational simulation and optimization, tradeoffs are shown and sustainable decision-making strategies are discussed.