Alessandro Giorgetti

A Novel Approach for Axiomatic-Based Design for the Environment

The Eco-design approach for new product development is becoming progressively more and more important for competitive and legislative reasons, especially in advanced markets (EU USA, East Asia, etc.). Its importance is increasingly growing since the decisions made in early design stages largely affect not only the cost but also the environmental impact of a product. This paper introduces a novel approach that could be used to increase the potential capability of an Eco-design approach. This aim is achieved through a better fit between the critical environmental issues and the development of new solutions using AD. The introduced approach, first, considers a meta-product point of view that uses a customized Smart Eco-design Platform and the Axiomatic Design (AD) for the improvement of the eco-sustainability of products. Then, the approach introduces the meta-system level as the reference level for detecting the system Design Matrix and developing an uncoupled design. This goal could be achieved through the use of AD and the implementation of the environmental information as a tool to reduce the space of the available design solutions. The first axiom aims to define the Design Matrix of the Functional System in order to detect its best configuration. The purpose is to avoid an optimization without appropriate knowledge in terms of interaction among meta-product and resources. Then, the Functional Requirements definition, used in AD, could represent the ideal index for the ease of sharing information and knowledge on a wide scale among different industrial sectors. The development of the Smart Eco-design Platform could encourage the use of this approach in real product development. The sharing of the database enables obtaining information for reducing the field of design parameters that satisfy the Functional Requirements. In this way, it could be possible to develop a system of products with an overall higher level of eco-sustainability and a better use of resources through information derived from other fields and experiences. Typical goals that are reachable are, for instance, represented by a system that needs less consumption of energy and material during the whole product life cycle.

An axiomatic design framework for reliability improvement

The Axiomatic Design methodology has been employed to solve technical problems in a variety of disciplines. This paper provides a robust framework useful to analyse the reliability of a large variety of systems, thus creating the correct environment to apply the AD axioms to develop good design solutions able to increase the system reliability. Furthermore, this paper proposes the use of a reliability matrix as a mean to evaluate the information content of the system through the analysis of the reliability of the components and of their dependent failure relationships. Once a global indicator is found, this data and the structure of reliability matrix can be used to evaluate and improve the proposed design solution.

On the Effects of the Rejuvenation Treatment on Mechanical and Microstructural Properties of IN-738 Superalloy

The main scope of this paper is to show the effects of a specific rejuvenation treatment studied for IN-38 on both the microstructure and the mechanical properties of the creep-damaged superalloy and to compare the tests results with the virgin material and with the recovery obtained through the standard heat treatment. This work will show that this rejuvenation treatment is able to recover the microstructure of creep-damaged specimens and that the creep and tensile properties of the rejuvenated alloy are even better than the virgin material for the tests performed. Moreover, it will be shown that the standard heat treatment provided for IN-738 is not able to fully recover the microstructure and that the creep properties of the superalloy during the tests have been lower than the virgin material.

Effects of Multiple Rejuvenation Cycles on Mechanical Properties and Microstructure of IN-738 Superalloy

The scope of this work is to show the effects of multiple applications of a rejuvenation treatment studied for IN-738 on both the microstructure and the mechanical properties of the creep-damaged superalloy and to check the recovery obtained after one and two rejuvenation cycles through creep and tensile tests, whose results will be compared with the performance of the virgin material. This work will show that this rejuvenation treatment is able to recover the microstructure of creep-damaged specimens after one and two applications and that the mechanical properties of the rejuvenated alloy are very similar to the virgin material even after two rejuvenation cycles.

Correction to: On the Effects of the Rejuvenation Treatment on Mechanical and Microstructural Properties of IN-738 Superalloy

Readers should note the following error in the first sentence of Abstract for this article: “IN-38” should be “IN-738”.