Exploring a Material-Focused Design Methodology: An Innovative Approach to Pressure Vessel Design

The design of components and elements comprising industrial machinery, as well as those that are part of an industrial system, has been carried out in recent years using various design methodologies. Currently, the products demanded by customers, as well as the needs of different companies, governments, and individuals, require considerations beyond traditional design, including multidisciplinary aspects such as sustainability, environmental friendliness, and circular economy. The design methodologies considered for this study are the quality function deployment (QFD) methodology, the theory of inventive problem-solving methodology, Ashby’s Materials Selection methodology, and the systematic approach methodology, which are currently the main design methodologies. These methodologies present some disadvantages, such as multidisciplinary requirements not being considered directly, the selection of materials based on standards is not well established, and obtaining technical requirements is ambiguous for the technical purposes of the design or manufacturing, and the designer’s experience in these examples is important to the design process and the development of the product. For these reasons, the traditional design methodologies are presented, next, a new design methodology is proposed and described, then a case study is performed in order to compare the proposed methodology with traditional design methodologies. Finally, the results show advantages over the traditional design methodologies.