A fea-based feasibility study on the replacement of student wooden desks and chairs with a plastic arm chair

Deforestation increases the amount of CO₂ gas in the atmosphere and is also a permanent destruction of forests. According to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), approximately 18 million acres of forest are lost each year. Thus, regulations have been placed on forests' clearance because the loss of forests causes global warming. Having identified the severe effects of greenhouse gases on the earth, this paper focuses on finding an alternative material for furniture manufacturing in order to reduce deforestation. With wooden furniture prices increasing due to the 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 to save material. A Finite Element Analysis (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 polycarbonate alloy (ABS-PC) fails. Hence, it is possible to replace classroom wooden furniture with cheap and easy to maintain polycarbonate arm chairs.