Teaching Sustainability in an Engineering Graphics Class with Solid Model- ing Tool

There is consensus about the need to teach sustainability, but also concern about how to accommodate these concepts into a crowded curriculum. Offering a separate course may not be a realistic choice due to resource or credit hour constraints. This paper investigates the capability of the sustainability component recently added to SolidWorks, which many universities use as a main Computer Aided Design (CAD) tool. We studied its usefulness in teaching sustainability concepts to engineering students. The study was performed in a Southern Colorado regional university over a period of two years involving eight sections of a first-year engineering graphics class consisting twenty four students each. In one course module, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was used to analyze the environmental impact of a cup holder. A sustainability report generated in SolidWorks accounts for the amount of Carbon Footprint, Water Eutrophication, Air Acidification and Total Energy Consumption. The base design scenario along with alternative options was evaluated to identify the environmental impacts and was compared to determine the most environmentally friendly options. To study the impact of this module on students, pre and post surveys were administered and the results suggested a significant improvement in sustainability learning and an increase in interest in sustainability. A similar approach could be used in other engineering programs with modifications depending upon the students’ learning styles and educational background. 1. Sustainability, Design and Engineering Education The World Commission on Environment and Development defines sustainable development as: “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” 1 . The US Environmental Protection Agency proposed a P3 Model: People, Planet and Prosperity 2 , which gives the engineering professionals a major responsibility in promoting the well being of the planet by maintaining the ecology and environment. David Orr described sustainable design as an activity that needs the careful nesting of human purposes with the larger patterns and flows of the natural world. The scope of sustainable design includes economic profitability, social acceptance, minimum energy and material use with minimal impact to the environment, and production of no hazardous waste. The current design philosophy and approach in the engineering profession embrace the functional purpose – derived from the customer needs – and the economic requirement – the producer’s basic business motivation – with little consideration of sustainability. With the growing consensus in industry and in academia about the importance of sustainability, engineering professionals must understand and incorporate sustainability concepts in their professional endeavors. Engineering educators need to prepare engineers with proper knowledge, skills and ability to accomplish sustainable design. Specific industries have developed practices to incorporate sustainability into their design. In the automotive industry sustainability research is performed through a comprehensive review of a vehicle’s life cycle, disposal and end of life analyses using different sustainability metrics and models to quantify the environmental impact 3 . However, application research literature points to the need for the whole design process to be reconsidered to integrate sustainability and to incorporate social responsibility into the product design 4 . 1.1 Approaches in Teaching Sustainability in Engineering Education Efforts to teach sustainability in the undergraduate engineering curriculum are assessed in Vanderburg 5 , where engineering education is described as composed of technical core courses and complementary courses on humanity subjects. However, technical core courses are taught in isolation from the human life context and humanities courses are very general in nature with no direct link to modern science and technology. Closer connections between the technical courses and the humanities courses can help engineering students understand the holistic nature of sustainability and the world; an alteration to any component may impact the entire system. Such education will help to prepare students as a global responsible citizen. This broader multidisciplinary knowledge is essential for seamless integration of sustainability into engineering education. Other approaches include an interdisciplinary seminar on environment and sustainability as a summer research program 6 , developmental and systems approach 7 , etc. The developmental and systems methodology utilizes Bloom’s Taxonomy and demonstrated a cognitive progression in learning sustainability via reading case studies throughout the six sequential design courses. Reading assignments are a good way to familiarize students with the topic. Such familiarization could be enhanced by simulation or hands-on activities, using visualization tools and databases, but it should be incorporated from very beginning of the engineering design process. In addition, various methods and pedagogies are available in literature incorporating sustainability in design education to enhance skills, awareness, learning in context, ethical responsibilities, synergy and co-creating principles 8 . 1.2 Standalone and integration Currently sustainability is taught more in some engineering disciplines such as environmental, chemical and civil engineering 9 , but since sustainability needs to be considered in every activity that any engineer performs, it is imperative that all engineering students should have a strong background in sustainability, which makes it necessary to integrate sustainability into the existing courses throughout the engineering programs 10 . Integration of sustainability in engineering education is vital to understand the social and environmental implications of a modern technology that makes engineers to incorporate sustainability into their design 11 . Some improvements in sustainability awareness among the engineering students have been reported in the literature. However, institutionalization as a main stream educational approach has not happened yet. Sustainability is barely talked about in a traditional engineering curriculum. As decisions made at early stages of a product’s life cycle have a profound impact on improving product sustainability, environmentally conscious design practices from the very beginning of a professional career will contribute to sustainability by considering global ecological factors and resources in addition to traditional functional and cost requirements. Since sustainability is becoming a theme of whatever engineers do, it should be included from the very beginning of the engineering curricula. This study focuses on the sustainability features of CAD, their respective design phases and ways to integrate sustainability education into CAD in an existing engineering graphics course. 1.3 Sustainability and CAD Design for sustainability and the role of CAD is presented in Rama Murthy and Mani 12 . Proper sustainability tools and techniques are required to implement sustainable design. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used to investigate successfully a spectrum of product life and its impact on P3. A review of sustainable product design approach is presented in Chiu and Chu 11 . Integration of CAD and life cycle inventory is one of the approaches. CADinvolves featurebased modeling to represent the final form of the design intent, and it does not support LCA data related to processes, machines, purchasing and suppliers – factors used to estimate the environmental impacts. Features and capability of CAD based sustainability modules are presented in Morbidoni et al. 13 ; they evaluate and compare CAD-based SLCA solutions and complete LCA software tools, with a focus on the mechanical product design SolidWorks Sustainability (by Dassault Systems) and GaBi (by PE International) have been considered as references for the comparison. Two of the leading CAD software companies have introduced sustainability capability in their software by linking with LCA software. SolidWorks Corporation has released SolidWorks Sustainability in 2010, which allows users to perform LCA studies directly on their CAD models 14 . Similarly, AutoDesk’s Inventor added sustainable features in collaboration with Sustainable Minds LLC that can perform an LCA on Bills of Materials: a Case Study in Ontario 4 CAD software 15 . The new sustainability module in SolidWorks provides designers with access to environmental databases early in the design process so the designer, in selecting the materials, manufacturing processes and logistics, can make an informed decision considering the environmental impacts and sustainability. This tool not only covers specific design criteria but also allows a wide range of product features 16 . In particular, during the design process a designer is able to run a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the products directly within the SolidWorks Window. LCA determines the consumption of energy and materials and the emissions to air, water, and land occurring throughout the entire life of the products 17 . To integrate this new feature of the SolidWorks software into an existing course is a challenge, but there is an urgent need to fulfill the future needs of the engineering profession.