Abstract

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is one of the most widely used tools to determine the environmental impact of products and processes. One of the main concerns with LCA is the limited comparability of the results due to limitations in defining the functional unit. This affects goal and scope definition of the LCA studies. A result, an object-oriented framework for LCA that integrates functional analysis and systems engineering principles was developed. In this research a cumulative damage function (CDF) to quantify the life of components, subsystems and components was defined. However, the development of the methodology and underlying principles to develop the CDF was left for future work. The purpose of this thesis is to develop a framework to quantify CDF using the concepts of Remaining Useful Life (RUL), reliability analysis and failure analysis so that it can be easily integrated into the object-oriented LCA framework. This thesis will present a 5-step methodology to quantify the CDF and demonstrate its use and effectiveness by implementing it on a manual can opener and a coffee maker as examples of product systems.

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Manufactures--Environmental aspects; Environmental impact analysis; Life cycle costing

Publication Date

12-12-2016

Document Type

Thesis

Student Type

Graduate

Degree Name

Industrial and Systems Engineering (MS)

Department, Program, or Center

Industrial and Systems Engineering (KGCOE)

Advisor

Marcos Esterman

Advisor/Committee Member

Brian Thorn

Comments

Physical copy available from RIT's Wallace Library at TS155.7 .D46 2016

Campus

RIT – Main Campus

Plan Codes

ISEE-MS

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