Ruud Balkenende

Ruud Balkenende
Delft University of Technology | TU · Department of Industrial Design

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68
Publications
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2,225
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Introduction
Skills and Expertise

Publications

Publications (68)
Article
Full-text available
Hazardous substances, or substances of concern (SoC), are present in numerous products and may be the source of significant risks to human health and the environment. In addition, the presence of SoC in products challenges the transition towards a circular economy. By implementing strategies such as reuse or recycling, SoC can be reintroduced in su...
Article
Full-text available
Using additive manufacturing for spare part production can ensure that spare parts are available for a long time. However, spare parts are currently not designed for additive manufacturing. This study aimed to find how the production of 3D-printed spare parts can be facilitated in the design of plastic parts. We used a literature review and illustr...
Article
Full-text available
Bio‐based polymers may present a sustainable, circular way to reduce the environmental impact of plastics because they are produced from biomass that absorbs CO2 during its growth. However, sourcing (type of biomass used and cultivation location), production, and end‐of‐life affect the environmental impact of bio‐based plastics. We assessed the eff...
Article
Full-text available
The environmental pressure, CO2 emissions (including embodied energy) and delivery risks of our digital infrastructures are increasing. The exponentially growing digitisation of services that drive the transition from industry 4.0 to industry 5.0 has resulted in a rising materials demand for ICT hardware manufacturing. ICT devices such as laptops a...
Article
Full-text available
Replacing fossil-based feedstock with renewable alternatives is a crucial step towards a circular economy. The bio-based plastics currently on the market are predominantly used in single-use applications, with remarkably limited uptake in durable products. This study explores the current state of the art of bio-based plastic use in durable consumer...
Article
Full-text available
Innovation is crucial to meet the circular economy goals for tire recycling. Devulcanization, an innovative recycling method of reprocessing tire rubber, offers a pathway towards achieving circular economy objectives. While previous research on devulcanization has primarily focused on technical aspects, this study shifts the focus towards identifyi...
Book
In this white paper, experts from science and practice share their knowledge of product repair. Repair is an important pillar of the circular economy as it is more efficient to repair a product than to completely dismantle or destroy it and recycle the materials. European legislation promoting repair is in the process of being adopted.
Article
Full-text available
Bio-based plastics are attracting increasing attention due to their perceived sustainability and circularity. While enabling circularity by using renewable feedstocks, they still contribute to plastic pollution. Furthermore, their rapidly growing market will cause bio-based plastics to constitute significant fractions of plastic waste, necessitatin...
Chapter
This research project, part of the Green Intensive Care Unit (ICU) initiative at the Erasmus University Medical Center (EMC), is focused on reducing the environmental impact of syringes at the ICU by designing solutions based on circular economy principles. Based on a Material Flow Analysis of the EMC ICU, syringes and their packaging have been ide...
Conference Paper
Materials form the basis of modern technological society. The extraction and processing of raw matter and the disposal of material things is at the heart of most of the environmental and social crises, and has important implications for the design and deployment of computation systems. In this paper, we present an analysis of the way in which mater...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Bio-based plastics are gaining attention as a sustainable, circular alternative to the current, petrochemical-based plastics. The main application of bio-based plastics is in single-use packaging with short lifetimes. Extending the application of bio-based plastics products towards durable consumer products requires the involvement of different val...
Article
Full-text available
The availability and storage of spare parts are the main barriers to product repair. One possibility would be to 3D print spare parts, which would also enable the repair of products not intended to be repaired. Besides manufacturers, 3D printing spare parts is an interesting option for self-repair by consumers. However, the digitisation of spare pa...
Conference Paper
This research project, part of the Green Intensive Care Unit (ICU) initiative at the Erasmus University Medical Center (EMC), is focused on reducing the environmental impact of syringes at the ICU by designing solutions based on circular economy principles. Based on a Material Flow Analysis of the EMC ICU, syringes and their packaging have been ide...
Article
Full-text available
Design indicators can be used by companies to track circular design implementation, which can yield insights into their performance and opportunities for improvement. Yet, existing indicator methods either lack depth with regard to circular design, are incomplete, or do not use design semantics. This study explores product-level circularity indicat...
Article
Full-text available
Product repairs are at the core of sustainable consumption and user manuals can play a relevant role in facilitating them. They are the accredited source of product information for end users and are therefore sought as an important means for the diagnosis and subsequent repair of household appliances. However, despite increasing societal demand for...
Article
Full-text available
The Circular Economy Action Plan adopted by the European Commission aims to keep value in products as long as possible through developing product-specific requirements for durability and repairability. In this context, various scoring systems have been developed for scoring product repairability. This study assessed the objectivity and completeness...
Article
Full-text available
Remanufacturing offers an approach to extend product lifetime beyond its first use. After restoring products to original quality, they are reintroduced to the market. To make products more suited for this approach, and to increase resource-efficiency, design for remanufacturing can be incorporated for new product development. Academic literature po...
Article
Full-text available
The design of composite products for a circular economy is challenging. Materials such as glass-fibre-reinforced plastics have long product lifetimes but are hard to recycle. For the effective reuse and recycling of products, parts, and materials, recovery strategies must be selected and implemented in the product design stage. This extends the sco...
Article
Full-text available
The idea of leveraging the Internet of Things (IoT) to support strategies in line with the circular economy (CE) has been gaining traction in literature. However, previous work has predominantly focused on the opportunities that these technologies can bring, and few studies have critically assessed the environmental viability of the proposed strate...
Article
Designers and engineers need better tools and methods to create highly repairable products. Design for disassembly and reassembly is an important product related design feature that can enhance repair. In a highly repairable product, those components that fail most often should be easily accessible for repair or replacement. This paper describes th...
Article
Full-text available
The process of fault diagnosis is an essential first step when repairing a product: it determines the condition of the parts and identifies the origin of failure. We report on how product users go through the process of fault diagnosis in consumer products and the influence of design features on this process. Two groups of 12 participants were aske...
Article
Full-text available
Composite materials are an attractive material choice as they enable lightweight, low-maintenance products with a long lifespan. Recycling these materials, however, remains a challenge. Homogeneous material composition and the use of thermoset matrices complicate reprocessing, and result in low-grade recyclate. This means that closing the loop for...
Article
Full-text available
In this paper, we provide an overview of how Safe-by-Design is conceived and applied in practice in a large number of engineering disciplines. We discuss the differences, commonalities, and possibilities for mutual learning found in those practices and identify several ways of putting those disciplinary outlooks in perspective. The considered engin...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Understanding the extent of common users' capabilities to repair products themselves, and the barriers during the repair could help legislators and manufacturers improve the design of products. This paper investigates users' capacity for using various common repair tools, their experience in repairing different household appliances, and the degree...
Article
Full-text available
Adopting design approaches that allow products to last multiple use-cycles supports European Commission objectives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reduce primary material impacts. Remanufacturing is an example of an appropriate circular strategy and it can be applied in a variety of industries that are intensive materials users. However, mos...
Article
Full-text available
Composite materials, in particular fibre reinforced polymers, present a challenge when reaching their end of life. Current recycling processes are unable to capture the high-end material quality, thus challenging (re)use of composite materials in a Circular Economy. Structurally reusing segmented parts of end-of-life products as construction elemen...
Article
Full-text available
Composite materials offer many advantages during the use phase, but recovery at the end of a lifecycle remains a challenge. Structural reuse, where an end of life product is segmented into construction elements, may be a promising alternative. However, composites are often used in large, complex shaped products with optimised material compositions...
Article
Full-text available
Previous literature has highlighted many opportunities for digital technologies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and data analytics, to enable circular strategies, i.e., strategies which support the transition to a circular economy (CE). As one of the key circular strategies for which the digital opportunities are apparent, maintenance is sele...
Article
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Circular oriented innovation aims to address sustainability problems such as resource scarcity, pollution and climate change by (re)designing industrial products, processes, business models, and value network configurations. Although the literature identifies collaboration as crucial for circular oriented innovation—due to the complexity, risk and...
Article
Full-text available
In a recent study, we identified seven key circular competencies for design: (1) Design for Multiple Use Cycles, (2) Design for Recovery, (3) Circular Impact Assessment, (4) Circular Business Models, (5) Circular User Engagement, (6) Circular Economy Collaboration, and (7) Circular Economy Communication. These were derived from small-scale studies...
Chapter
In this chapter we sketch the opportunities and challenges of designing products and materials that fit a circular economy, with a specific focus on bio-based plastics. We show that the often-used “butterfly” model of the circular economy, which distinguishes between a biocycle and a technocycle, is not very useful when we consider bio-based plasti...
Article
Full-text available
While the enabling capabilities of the Internet of Things (IoT) in the Circular Economy (CE) have been highlighted in a number of publications, knowledge about how to leverage IoT in actual implementation of circular strategies is still lacking. This paper aims to elucidate reasons for the apparent mismatch between the ‘theoretical opportunities’ o...
Article
The medical device industry leads to high environmental footprint while holding fundamental social function. The panorama is composed of devices with rather specific lifecycles and impacts: imaging equipment that eventually become electronic waste, sophisticated invasive devices that require sterilisation before reprocessing, and potentially infect...
Article
Full-text available
Fault diagnosis is the process of identifying and characterising a fault when a failure occurs. It is, therefore, an essential step to take before product-repair. In this study, we ask how conventional users diagnose faults in household appliances and how the design of these appliances facilitates or hampers the process of fault diagnosis.To invest...
Article
Full-text available
Collaborative innovation is necessary to explore and implement circular economy strategies. Yet, empirical investigations into such collaborations are scarce. It is unclear whether the circular context creates differences or represents adaptions within how collaborative innovation is conducted. We draw upon strategic management and open innovation...
Article
Full-text available
This study addresses what competencies (knowledge, skills, and attitudes) designers need in order to successfully design products and services for a circular economy. Existing literature, though sparse, has identified a number of circular economy competencies for design. Yet, a coherent overview is lacking. To complement the competencies found in t...
Preprint
Full-text available
Static approaches for business modelling cannot cope with the increased complexity commonly linked to Circular Business Model (CBM) innovation. In this research, we aim to investigate whether System Dynamics (SD) modelling is suitable to verify the long-term behaviour and impacts of CBMs by applying it to a particular case study. The dynamics of a...
Article
Full-text available
This paper focuses on how the Internet of Things (IoT) could contribute to the transition to a circular economy (CE), through supporting circular business model and design strategies. While literature has highlighted the opportunities for IoT to support circular strategies in business, little has been published about actual implementations in pract...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Composite materials are an attractive material choice as they enable lightweight, low maintenance products with a long lifespan. But closing the loop for these materials in a Circular Economy (CE) is challenging, especially for thermoset composites. In a CE, products should be designed for minimal impact while preserving their environmental and eco...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Limited research has been done on design competencies for a circular economy in practice. Yet, an overview of design competencies for a circular economy would be useful to understand which topics should be emphasized in both education and practice. This paper focuses on deriving circular economy competencies for product designers working in industr...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Static approaches for business modelling cannot cope with the increased complexity commonly linked to Circular Business Model (CBM) innovation. In this research, we aim to investigate whether System Dynamics (SD) modelling is suitable to verify the long-term behaviour and impacts of CBMs by applying it to a particular case study. The dynamics of a...
Article
Full-text available
We investigate why companies collaborate within the circular oriented innovation process. The purpose is to understand what motives trigger collaborative circular oriented innovation, as well as conditions, drivers and barriers. First, we define circular oriented innovation building on sustainable oriented innovation literature. Subsequently, we in...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The transition towards a circular economy proposes to deliver sustainable, lower carbon opportunities to society, governments and companies. This paper focuses on finding barriers encountered during remanufacturing activities and interpreting the barriers by using a framework for dynamic capabilities. Dynamic capabilities enable companies to adjust...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Remanufacturing is seen as a key strategy as part of the transition towards a circular economy. Remanufacturers encounter various barriers in their operations, even after being applied in various for over decades. These barriers, along with propositions to overcome them, are discussed extensively in academic literature. This paper focuses on the pr...
Article
Full-text available
In the transition to a circular economy companies are exploring new business models, implying a shift from selling products to offering products in circular business models, such as leasing. Product design is thought to play a crucial role in enabling this. Having a robust overview of relevant design roles and competencies is of foundational import...
Chapter
This chapter presents emerging work on mapping collaborative activities related to Circular Business Model (CBM) implementation. Findings pertain to the importance of collaboration presenting specific types demonstrated while pursuing CBMs. Future research areas are highlighted to explore potential impacts of collaboration upon CBMs.
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This paper explores the use of annotated portfolios as a method to support the qualitative analysis of interview data about design projects. Annotated portfolios have so far been used to support artefacts with text in order to discuss them in the context of 'research through design' In this paper, we interpret the five-step method of McCracken and...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This paper examines the role of product designers in the transition towards the circular economy. Both scientific and grey literature show remarkable optimism when it comes to role strategic and coordinating role designers could play in this transition process. However, there has been little examination of the actual role and influence designers ha...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Based on a literature review, this article discusses how the challenge of diminishing clothing production volumes has been approached within the field of sustainable fashion. We identify six common strategies in literature and discuss the approach of user involvement in the process of design and/or manufacture of garments in detail. A critical anal...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Circular product design is a relatively new approach to design suitable strategies to realize circular products. Additive manufacturing (AM) is seen as a promising enabling production process. It has digital and additive characteristics, which makes AM different from conventional production techniques. However, it is yet unclear how this technique...
Article
Full-text available
The framework of design for the circular economy is increasingly used in industry to improve product sustainability and decrease costs, and in academia various models have been developed to guide circular design. However, in the medical sector, although it generates a large amount of waste, application of circular design principles is difficult bec...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
LED lamps have been redesigned taking into account design guidelines that are based on large scale recycling tests. The design guidelines focus on the materials used, but especially on the way in which materials and parts are connected with as key aim the ability to enable separation of the electronics at end of life. A MR16 halogen replacement LED...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
GreenElec aims to significantly improve on the resource efficiency of electronics and electronic products. This is accomplished by close cooperation between manufacturers and recyclers. Design guidelines for improved recycling have been formulated and products (lamps and displays) have been redesigned according to these guidelines. Interestingly, d...
Article
The composition of NiCu surface alloys, prepared by decomposition of nickel carbonyl on a Cu(100) surface, has been studied before as well as after annealing using MeV Rutherford Backscattering Spectroscopy. NiCu films with a thickness of 2 nm and of 10 nm, respectively, having a sharp interface with the copper substrate, were grown. The nickel fra...
Chapter
Building hardware that fit within the philosophy of Ambient Intelligence often requires access to responsive materials. For this purpose responsive materials are defined as materials that change appearance or shape as a function of an external stimulus. That may be as much as the way a person experiences the look of a material in its interaction wi...
Article
The reliability of coatings that are used in industrial applications critically depends on their mechanical properties. Nanoindentation and scratch testing are well-established techniques to measure some of these properties, namely the elastic modulus and hardness of coatings. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of also assessing the coat...
Article
The epitaxial growth of nickel-copper surface alloys on a copper substrate is studied by high energy ion scattering. Nickel has been deposited by decomposition of nickel carbonyl on the (100) surface of copper at an elevated temperature. The composition of the grown overlayers is measured by glancing angle Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy. Th...
Chapter
A mixed nickel-copper film with a thickness of 1.5 nm, and an almost pure nickel film with a thickness of 10 nm, are grown by nickel carbonyl decomposition on a Cu(100) surface. High-energy ion channeling and LEED reveal that both films have grown epitaxially. The growth of the 1.5 nm, mixed film is pseudomorphic and the misfit between the film and...

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