As concern for the environment grows, there is a corresponding trend among colleges and universities worldwide to incorporate sustainability into engineering education. Addressing this growing trend "Materials and the Environment", by renowned materials authority Mike Ashby, is the first book devoted exclusively to the environmental aspects of materials, a core subject area for undergraduate students in several engineering disciplines, including mechanical, materials, civil, aerospace, manufacturing and design. With in-depth coverage of such topics as material consumption and its drivers, the material lifecycle, eco-informed material selection, renewable materials and sustainability, along with eco-profiles of more than 60 widely used materials, this book will appeal not only to instructors of materials science and selection courses, but to professional materials engineers and product designers as well. This is the first book devoted solely to the environmental aspects of materials and their selection, production, use and disposal, by noted materials authority Mike Ashby. It introduces methods and tools for thinking about and designing with materials within the context of their role in products and the environmental consequences. It contains numerous case studies showing how the methods discussed in the book can be applied to real-world situations. It includes full-colour data-sheets for 60 of the most widely used materials, featuring such environmentally relevant information as their annual production and reserves, embodied energy and process energies, carbon footprints, and recycling data. The tools developed in the text are implemented in the CES EduPack Eco Design Edition software and new Eco Audit Tool available from Granta Design.
Royal Society Research Professor Emeritus at Cambridge University and Former Visiting Professor of Design at the Royal College of Art, London, UK Mike Ashby is sole or lead author of several of Elsevier's top selling engineering textbooks, including Materials and Design: The Art and Science of Material Selection in Product Design, Materials Selection in Mechanical Design, Materials and the Environment, Engineering Materials 1&2 and Materials: Engineering, Science, Processing and Design. He is also coauthor of the book Nanomaterials, Nanotechnologies and Design.
&i;"I think this is likely to be a very successful text, since it clearly fills an important niche in engineering texts dealing with materials. I have been quite frustrated with the lack of real data available, when discussing how to design products more responsibly...I especially like the emphasis here on the fact that there are no easy answers".&o;
- Blaine Lilly, The Ohio State University