Abstract:

Circular design implementation poses a considerable challenge to company designers. Despite vast literature on the integration of environmental aspects into the product design and development, and – more recently – on the circular design issue, it is still difficult to achieve very ambitious goals of the circular economy on the company's operational level. This paper presents an analysis based on a literature review and investigates the subject, object and process aspects of design in relation to circular design. The aim of the analysis is to lay foundations for a holistic circular design model in the future. To illustrate the practical side of the problems the analysis was carried out for eco-design in company manufacturing the steam turbine blades. The case study concerns stator blades with reference to three design solution variants.