Selection of industrial coating based on environmental impact characteristics

This research is aimed at establishing a design method that combines environmental and performance concerns in the selection of industrial coatings to suffice performance requirements and minimize environmental impact. The coating selection problem herein is based on general coating types, instead of focusing on specific brands of coatings. The general coating types are based on the types of resins in the coatings. In my example, I used three coating types---acrylic, epoxy, and polyurethane coating. The coating selection method allows engineers to make design decisions, decisions on which type of coatings to use, early in the product development process, but in a state of better information. The result of this project is a means for incorporating environmental impact measures into design and manufacturing decisions by relating environmental characteristics to key performance variables. The foundation of this work is a method for quickly comparing different industrial coating choices based on their environmental impacts and their performance in a given application. The method includes the development of empirical performance-impact relationships. One by-product of this research is a software to facilitate the selection of the suitable coatings for specific needs.; My basic research methods were to develop a coating selection ontology and define performance measures based on this ontology, then develop a coating environmental impact taxonomy and define impact measures based on that impact taxonomy. I mapped the coating selection ontology to the environmental impact taxonomy to develop empirical relationships between performance measures and coatings' environmental impacts.; When developing my coating selection ontology. I first used component selection methods to identify the basic aspects of coating selection problems and then developed these basic aspects in detail to arrive at a comprehensive coating selection ontology. The result was a coating selection ontology based on four classes: function, service environment, substrate, and surface layer location. The coating selection ontology is a very generic selection method and it can be easily modified to be applied to a specific case. Using the coating selection ontology and persuasiveness guidelines, I picked four example performance measures for our research that are easily measured well-abrasion resistance, impact resistance, dry heat resistance, and water vapor transmission. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...