Track: Manufacturing and Design

Abstract

Deforestation increases the amount of CO₂ gas (a greenhouse gas) in the atmosphere, and has been identified as the permanent destruction of forests. An estimated 18 million acres (7.3 million hectares) of forest, which is roughly the size of the country of Panama, are lost each year, according to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Thus, regulations have been placed on forests’ clearance as the loss of these forests has a negative impact on the Earth’s atmospheric ozone layer. Having identified the severe effects of greenhouse gases on the earth, this paper focuses on trying to find an alternative material for furniture manufacturing so as to reduce deforestation. With wooden furniture prices increasing due to the placed regulations limiting deforestation, the effect being significant in the education sector, plastics are studied as the alternative material to classroom wooden furniture. Instead of having a desk and a chair, the furniture is designed as a single combined plastic arm chair. This is done to save material, since plastics also have their own unfavourable effects on the environment. A FEA is carried out on the selected polycarbonate arm chair using Solid Works, and it is observed that the maximum stress that the arm chair can be subjected to is less than that at which the polycarbonate alloy (ABS-PC) fails. Hence, a conclusion is made which shows that it is feasible/possible to replace classroom wooden furniture with cheap, simple and easy to maintain polycarbonate arm chairs.