Meta-heuristic Methods Applied to the Design of Wood—Plastic Composites,with Some Attention to Environmental Aspects

Abstract

This article addresses the optimization of the quality of wood—plastic composites (WPC) designed for outdoor uses such as decking, taking into account the environmental impact during the life cycle of the product, from production to end of life (from ground to ground). In a context where several conflicting objectives must be satisfied simultaneously in the design process, meta-heuristic approaches provide efficient methods for optimization. Multi-objective particle swarm optimization (MO-PSO) has been chosen here to solve a complex problem in which physical properties such as creep and duration of load, water absorption and swelling, need to be improved with a limited impact on environment. This requires to get reliable information on material properties as related to its composition, environmental impacts through life cycle analysis (LCA), and to implement relevant information such as exhaustion of fossils resources through analytical or probabilistic models in the PSO algorithm in order to obtain a set of optimal solutions for the composite. This article shows the feasibility of this approach, which can be generalized in the design of any type of composite structures, provided objective functions can be specified.

Keywords

wood plastic composites particle swarm optimization eco-design life cycle analysis mechanical properties.

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