Title:
Ecologically Inspired Refinement of Engineered Systems
Ecologically Inspired Refinement of Engineered Systems
Author(s)
Malone, Stephen M.
Advisor(s)
Bras, Berdinus A.
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Abstract
The design stage offers the greatest impact potential on the sustainable outcome of engineered systems and current sustainability-geared tools offer insightful and vital details in the pursuit of more sustainable human systems. However, they fail to address the problem of how to effectively design circular production systems analogous to, and to the performance levels of, those occurring in mature natural ecosystems. This work provides insight into the design of engineered systems that exhibit higher resource efficiency than conventional designs by leveraging the decomposer functional role found throughout natural ecosystems, but often lacking or missing altogether in engineered systems.
Principal Component and Cluster Analysis is used to uncover the fundamental Ecological Network Analysis (ENA) metrics that best describes ecosystem performance. This knowledge is used to develop a classified and categorized database of technological, biological, or hybrid systems that mimics the decomposer roles from ecological systems by increasing both the density of connections and the cycling material and energy performance. This database of decomposers is then applied to engineered systems using a generalized ENA Modeling Methodology (ENAMM). ENAMM is then tested and applied to several case studies of varying scale and complexity, thus ensuring validity and flexibility across the engineering design landscape.
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Date Issued
2020-12-06
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Resource Type
Text
Resource Subtype
Dissertation