Towards Simulation-Based Circular Product Design

Assessing the circular economy (CE) performance of products has become an essential consideration in product design processes. While a growing body of literature is exploring the use of CE indicators to guide design processes, they typically assume broad design changes (e.g., material changes, end-of-life treatment) that may not accurately capture trade-offs in CE indicators, technical performance, and design feasibility. This paper aims to address the above gaps with the goal of incorporating CE assessment into simulation-based design. To this end, this paper defines a novel framework for using simulation-based design to analyze the effects of parametric changes in product design attributes on CE performance. First, the proposed framework describes the lifecycle information needed for computing resource-based, product-level CE indicators at the design stage. Depending on the set of selected CE indicators, corresponding simulation models are used to compute the effects of changing design parameters, and setting design/performance constraints, on the product's CE performance. Thus, the proposed framework enables the selection and optimization of product design attributes for achieving a specific level of CE performance, given specific technical performance requirements and other design constraints. The application of this framework is demonstrated using a case study conducted on a flywheel.