Developing design methodologies based on circular solution demonstrators (ESR 11)

Research question: How to design products for functional value recovery?

Design strategies nowadays are not properly aligned with the demands of a circular economy, where resources must be looped back to the economic system and kept valuable for as long as possible. Most of the existing design strategies are focused on designing single-life, instead of multiple, products. Products that will be used once and then thrown away.

Value recovery strategies like maintenance, repair, refurbishing, part harvesting or remanufacture are not being considered during the design process, which implies that the required product recovery operations are not being considered either. As a result, recovery operations like core extraction, reassembly or cleaning are inefficient and difficult to perform. When that is the case, value cannot be recovered from products and they are no longer considered products but waste, even if there might still be remaining value locked into them.

In view of this situation, Beatriz’s research will focus on exploring, describing and experimenting how value recovery operations can be taken into account at early stages of the design process. The research goal is to develop methods or tools to implement early in the design process based on circular demonstrators.

Researcher:
Beatriz Pozo Arcos
Ph.D. Candidate
TU Delft, Sustainable Design Engineering – Circular Economy

 

Email:
b.pozoarcos@tudelft.nl

Supervisor:
Ruud Balkenende
professor of Circular Product Design
TU Delft
Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering

 

Email:
a.r.balkenende@tudelft.nl

Promotor:
prof.dr. Jan P.L. Schoormans
Professor of Consumer Research and Behaviour, Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering

 

Email:
J.P.L.Schoormans@tudelft.nl