Sustainable Design: Using Physical Prototypes to Most Benefit Design Students and Environment?

After reviewing the main environmental areas of concern today, this paper will focus on waste management within the area of sustainability. For many years, as part of the design process, physical prototypes were a necessary. This was in order to prove a design‘s functionality and safety. They were expensive, time consuming and, by todays standards wastful. Often, once production began, they were scrapped. The necessity of a physical prototype outweighed all environmental considerations. In the 21st century, with the growth in Computer Aided Engineering (CAE), physical prototypes have nearly been replaced with virtual prototypes. The evidence is overwhelming as to the benfits of virtual prototypes to designers, designs and the environment. This paper will research and identify an area where physical prototypes are still beneficial, that of educating design engineers. A survey of mechanical engineering students over 5 years will identify a significant difference in the basic engineering knowledge of full-time engineering students when compared with their part-time colleagues. The use of physical prototypes can help reduce this difference. This paper argues that physical prototypes, under certain conditions, can reduce waste and still be sustainable.