Sustainable manufacturing: evaluation and modeling of environmental impacts in additive manufacturing

Cleaner production and sustainability are of crucial importance in the field of manufacturing processes where great amounts of energy and materials are being consumed. Nowadays, additive manufacturing technologies such as direct additive laser manufacturing allow us to manufacture functional products with high added value. Insofar as environmental considerations become an important issue in our society, as well as legislation regarding environment become prominent (Normalization ISO 14 044), the environmental impact of those processes have to be evaluated in order to make easier its acceptance in the industrial world. Some studies have been conducted on electric consumption of machine tools (standby consumption, in process consumption, etc.) but only a few studies take into account the whole existing environmental flows (material, fluids, electricity). This paper presents a new methodology where all flows consumed (material, fluids, electricity) are considered in the environmental impact assessment. This method coupled a global view required in a sustainable approach and an accurate evaluation of flow consumption in the machine. The methodology developed is based on a predictive model of flow consumption defined from the manufacturing path and CAD model of the part which will be produce. In order to get an accurate model of the process, each feature of the machine is modeled. The goal of this work is to integrate this model into the design loop for additive manufacturing parts.