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Teaching Sustainable Engineering and Eco Design

How do you integrate teaching of eco design into existing courses?

How can you help students to develop a rational, quantitative, and practical approach to the subject?

Sustainability and eco design are topics of increasing interest and importance. Many universities are seeking to improve teaching of these topics. They want to make sustainable engineering a component of mainstream courses in areas such as manufacturing, mechanical engineering, materials science, architecture, civil engineering, and aerospace engineering.

CES EduPack can help. EduPack is a package of teaching resources already used to support materials education in engineering and design at over 700 universities and colleges worldwide. It is centered on the CES EduPack software - a highly visual tool that is very effective at engaging students with the subject.

CES EduPack for eco design

Granta has augmented the standard teaching resources of the CES EduPack with:

• The Eco Audit Tool - easy-to-use software that helps to introduce students to key concepts in sustainable engineering. It quickly calculates the energy and carbon footprint of a product at different stages in its life cycle. You can produce illustrations for lectures, use it in student projects, and encourage exploration of 'what if?' scenarios.
  
  More on the Eco Audit Tool >>>
  
  
• A PowerPoint lecture on 'Environmentally-informed materials choice' is available within the EduPack lecture series.
  
  
• Eco Property data for over 3,000 materials enables the use of CES EduPack's powerful selection and analysis software in projects to investigate and compare the environmental impact of materials and processes.
  
  The Level 3 version of this database corresponds to the Eco MaterialUniverse industrial product. More information in the industrial section of this website >>>
  
  
• Textbook links - the CES EduPack information resources provide references to a broad range of standard materials and engineering textbooks.
  
  These now include a new textbook from Professor Mike Ashby, Materials and the Environment (right) published in early 2009. This text introduces methods for thinking about and designing with materials when one of the objectives is to minimize environmental impact. These methods are reflected in some of the tools provided within the CES EduPack Eco Design edition - and the book provides exercises that can be completed with CES EduPack.

Eco design in industry

Engineering educators who are creating or updating courses, or promoting their courses to students, are always interested to hear about the industrial relevance of course contents. Eco design is one area where industrial interest is strengthening. Granta works with the Environmental Materials Information Technology (EMIT) Consortium. This new collaboration involves companies including EADS Astrium, Eurocopter, Emerson, NASA, Rolls-Royce, and the UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL). It is focused on developing information resources and software to assist in eco design.

Latest EMIT Consortium information and member list >>>

There are a number of interesting points about this collaboration:

• It is one of a growing list of such projects that reflects real, practical industrial interest and investment in the eco design topic
  
  
• The 'headline' eco issue of carbon footprint is of growing importance, particularly in the context of likely future government intervention such as carbon trading schemes
  
  
• However, in many cases a more urgent commercial factor is the response to current or emerging eco regulations - particularly those relating to: restricted substances, such as the European Union's REACH Directive; and to energy usage, such as the Energy-using Products (EuP) Directive
  
  
• The focus of the Consortium members is on practical design. They want tools that enable their designers to make quick, approximate estimates of environmental impact early in the design phase, thus avoiding later-stage problems and focusing on design routes likely to offer the best combination of product performance and eco impact.

From an educator's point-of-view, this underlines the value of equipping students with a solid grasp of eco design principles (enabling well-informed judgments) and an understanding of both the utility and limitations of approximate data and its sensible application within the design process.

Further information

The CES EduPack information pack includes access to a recorded seminar on this topic and 2 white papers of particular relevance for eco design.

• Recorded seminar - 'Teaching Sustainable Engineering and Eco Design' with Prof Mike Ashby
  
  
• White paper - 'The CES EduPack Eco Audit Tool - A White Paper', M.F. Ashby, N. Ball, C. Bream, February 2008. Details this new tool for teaching eco design concepts, including case studies of its use.
  
  
• White paper - 'The CES Eco Selector - Background Reading', M.F. Ashby, A. Miller, F. Rutter, U.G.K. Wegst, first published 2005 . Provides information on the eco property data available with CES EduPack and case studies showing how it can be applied in teaching.

DOWNLOAD THE INFORMATION PACK >>>