A Robust Eco-Design Approach Based on New Sensitivity Coefficients by Considering the Uncertainty of LCI

It is urgent to introduce life cycle assessment (LCA) into eco-design in order to conduct eco-design in the quantitative and systematic era. In the design phase, various uncertainties in product life cycle inventory (LCI) are emerged. In practice, the real value of LCI calculated in the product end-of-life phase may be much different from the target LCI value predicted in the design phase. The aim of this research is to propose a robust design method to overcome the uncertainty issue. Regarding the scope of LCI analysis, this paper focused on the product manufacturing phase and its end-of-life phase. In this paper, the design problem of robust eco-design is modeled in a mathematical way, the novel sensitivity coefficient of LCI with uncertainty is proposed to solve the robust eco-design problem from mathematical perspective, and a guideline-based approach for robust design is proposed based on the new sensitivity coefficients. A case study is provided to illustrate the application of this research and validate our methods.