9420405 Mistree This grant provides funding for research and development of a Virtual Prototyping environment for use throughout product design for assessing a product's serviceability and demanufacturability. Design for service and demanufacture (i.e., the entire process involved in recycling, reuse, and/or disposal of a product after it has been taken back by a company) lends itself to Virtual Prototyping because of the expense involved in creating hardware prototypes to be tested for service and demanufacture. The specific research thrusts in this project are product representation and model generation, human-in-the-loop simulation, demanufacturing process simulation, and decision support. The overall objectives are to improve the quality of the decision-making process during product design and to obtain the resulting product in a reduced amount of time. The target application is the service and demanufacture of automobiles. This work will result in a prototypical virtual design, service, and demanufacture studio. The underlying product representation and design information generated during virtual prototyping coupled with the decision-making process enables a better informed and more rational decision-making process. The virtual design, service, and demanufacture virtual prototyping environment will be used in courseware for enhancing environmentally conscious product design education.
