This paper addresses the optimization of the quality of wood plastic composites (WPC) designed for outdoor uses such as decking, taking into account the environmental impact during the life cycle of the product, from production to end of life. In a context where several conflicting objectives must be satisfied simultaneously in the design process, meta-heuristic approaches provide efficient methods for optimization. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) has been chosen here to solve a complex problem in which physical properties such as creep and duration of load, water absorption and swelling, need to be improved with a limited impact on environment. This requires to get reliable information on material properties as related to its composition, environmental impacts through life cycle analysis (LCA), and to implement this information through analytical or probabilistic models in the PSO algorithm in order to obtain a set of optimal solutions for the composite. This paper shows the feasibility of this approach, which can be generalized in the design of any type of composite structures, provided objective functions can be specified.
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