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There is a broad consensus that the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) framework according to IS0 14040-14043 is very useful for pursuing the vision of sustainable development in product design and optimization. However due to the necessary effort involved, in practice the application of this framework to complex products like automobiles is very limited. This article deals on the one hand with methodological approaches for simplifying LCA in a systematic way. On the other hand it presents the existing method of the Iterative Screening LCA as an already sound and efficient simplifying method, suitable for assessing complex products.

These days, environmental issues have become more and more of a concern in the automobile industry. Especially, one of the environmental impact evaluation methodologies currently being developed and standardized is the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). LCA is a quantitative method for evaluating the environmental impact of a product throughout its life cycle. Our purpose for studying LCA is to choose environmentally friendly materials. We had used polyurethane (PU) as the material for the bumper fascia. We intended to adopt polypropylene (PP) as a replacement for polyurethane and decided to conduct a comparative LCA for the bumper assembly using PU and PP fascia. In this paper, the total life cycle (raw material, manufacturing, transportation, use and end of life) of the bumper will be studied through inventory analysis, impact assessment and interpretation.

In the past there has been a concentration on performing LCAs of car components. Based on the increasing experience and know-how gained in the past by performing LCAs of car components truck designers get the chance to make a statement about the ecological impact of each alternative. The most significant difference between LCAs of car and truck components is the use phase. This paper describes a Life-Cycle-Assessment (LCA) of different air deflection systems made of composite materials. The actually used system is produced by Resin Transfer Molding (RTM) while a possible alternative could be made out of Sheet Molding Compound (SMC). The calculations have shown that there exists a potential to improve the ecological profiles of composite components by replacing glass fibers with natural fibers.

In accordance with ISO 14040 and ISO/FDIS 14041, different recycling scenarios of aluminum car body sheet have been examined by an LCA study, including shredding, sink-float sorting and remelting; dismantling and remelting; combination of both techniques. The study was based on the aluminum car body of an Audi A8. For benchmarking reasons, these different life cycle scenarios were compared with a conventional steel car body fulfilling the same functions and with a lightweight steel body with 25 % weight reduction. It was found that for most of the selected impact categories, the aluminum car body life cycle which ends in shredding, sink-float sorting and remelting compares favourably even with a steel light-weight construction. On the other hand, dismantling and remelting and the more realistic combination of both techniques show advantages in comparison with the shredding and sink-floating technique.

The automobile painting is a very energy and emission (solvents) intensive process step in the production of automobiles with regard to the small amount of paint applied to the car body. The awareness has risen that cleaner production technologies must substitute end-of-pipe control technologies. If these technologies strive for being a competitive option in corporate decision-making process, not only their environmental but also their technical and economical performance has to be on the same or better level compared to conventional technologies. The approach of Life-Cycle Engineering (LCE) by PE and IKP investigates technical, environmental and economical aspects of products and technologies. It is developed to a simulation tool to analyse weak points and optimisation potentials as well as to support product and technology development in the painting industry.

The increased global competition has led to immense interest in the development of new ways of increasing productivity and quality. It is a well known fact that the costs of manufactured products are largely determined at the design stage. It is important to consider manufacturability early in the design. To be able to cut life cycle costs at an early stage the following DFMA-tools have been developed: Design for Manufacture (DFM), Design for Assembly (DFA), Design for Service (DFS) and Design for Environment (DFE). This contribution shows the design for the complete life cycle - with the tools DFM, DFA, DFS, DFE - its present state and some industrial applications. Using an electronic company as an example the implementation of DFMA in an TQM-environment and their integration in the product development process is shown. The value-assessment metric ‘Materials, Energy, Toxicity (MET)’ is also described.

The Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry has noted that the peer review process is a key feature for the advancement of life cycle assessment. The International Organisation for Standardisation has recently provided further guidance and requirements for conducting such reviews in the ISO standard on life cycle assessment (ISO 14040). This paper outlines the contribution of the peer review process to the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) of a generic 1500 Kg vehicle that was carried out by United States Automotive Materials Partnership's Life Cycle Assessment Special Topics Group (USAMP/LCA). At the time of writing the final report for this study had not been reviewed, therefore the paper focuses on the overall peer review process, preliminary findings and lessons learned to date. This paper is one of six SAE publications discussing the results and execution of the USCAR AMP Generic Vehicle LCI.

This paper discusses in detail how data categories, data quality and allocation procedures were defined and implemented in the USAMP LCI analysis of a generic automobile. These data-related parameters are important for all LCI analyses but are especially important for the USAMP LCI analysis of a complete automobile. Whereas most LCI analyses have been conducted on relatively simple product systems consisting of a single material made with a single manufacturing process, the USAMP product system consists of a vast, interconnected array of dissimilar materials, products and manufacturing processes coupled with complex use, maintenance and disposition life cycle stages. As a result of this complexity, data is necessarily collected from an equally wide range of potentially incompatible sources.

The lifetime of dynamically loaded components can be improved dramatically by finding the crack initiation point with suitable software tools and optimization of the critical areas. With increasing capacities of computers the prediction of the lifetime for components by numerical methods gets more and more important. Using the program FEMFAT the assessment of uniaxially and multiaxially loaded components as well as welding seams and spot joints is possible. The theory applied in FEMFAT differs in some aspects from classical approaches like the nominal stress concept or the local one and can be characterized by the term „influence parameter method”. The specimen S/N-curve is locally modified by different influence parameters as e.g. stress-gradient to take into account notch effects, mean-stress influence which is quantified by means of a Haigh-diagram, surface roughness and treatments, temperature, technological size, etc.

Business decisions are based on carefully developed target costs and profits for autos or any other manufactured products. However, when it comes to environmental management, occupational health and safety, recycling and end of life of vehicles, significant costs associated with these activities are typically hidden in overhead, or are undocumented, including costs that may come back to a company at the end of the vehicle's life. Life Cycle Cost Management (LCCM) is a business decision process that integrates any or all of the environmental, health, safety and recycling (EHS&R) phases of product life with a full range of functional costs to provide a business focus on design decisions. The concept of the extended enterprise is now a reality. LCCM is a process for identifying true environmental, health and safety (EHS) costs as they relate to automobile parts, materials, and manufacturing processes.

There is an ongoing debate as to what fuel or fuels should power automobiles. Many analysts look at economics, others look at criteria pollutants, still others make the case based on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases embodied in the fuel. This study utilizes life cycle inventory techniques to examine the economics, emissions and energy efficiency of automotive fuels as a means to improve the energy utilization efficiency and to better protect the environment. Application of the techniques demonstrates the trade-offs inherent in substitute fuels.

Direct Injection technology represents a major breakthrough for both, Gasoline and Diesel engines with respect to reduction of fuel consumption and thus CO2 emissions. However, for compliance with future European emission regulations Euro 3 and Euro 4 both engine types will require massive further development including advanced exhaust aftertreatment for lean NOx conversion. Actual development trends for both engine types are presented.

A computer model has been developed to assess the energy consumption and the CO2-emissions from the global transport sector as a function of the transport demand, the vehicle and propulsion technologies, the driving behavior and the fuels used. Results are the energy consumption and the CO2-emissions of single vehicles and of vehicle fleets for all modes of transport. Using this model, four different scenarios for the future energy consumption of the global transport sector up to 2100 have been defined using different options for the future development. For the calculations the countries of the world have been categorized into 17 regions according to the geographical and economical situation.

The total life cycle approach makes use of data for various sub-systems and modules to describe the relevance of a defined system under consideration. The different processes and steps take place in several locations. The life cycle approach is an assessment tool beyond this spatial dimension. Often these basic information is not available any more or never has been considered as valuable. By this, different emission sources and different receiving environments are simply neglected by summing up for the total life cycle contributions. The spatial dimension is of outstanding importance for the determination of relevance and meaning of environmental burdens. A more advanced life cycle concept should cover this. Besides the spatial differentiation within on product system, life cycle consideration are also often used to compare different production sites.

A life-cycle assessment (LCA) has been developed to help compare the economic, environmental and energy (EEE) impacts of converting coal to automotive fuels in China. This model was used to evaluate the total economic cost to the customer, the effect on the local and global environments, and the energy efficiencies for each fuel option. It provides a total accounting for each step in the life cycle process including the mining and transportation of coal, the conversion of coal to fuel, fuel distribution, all materials and manufacturing processes used to produce a vehicle, and vehicle operation over the life of the vehicle. The seven fuel scenarios evaluated in this study include methanol from coal, byproduct methanol from coal, methanol from methane, methanol from coke oven gas, gasoline from coal, electricity from coal, and petroleum to gasoline and diesel. The LCA results for all fuels were compared to gasoline as a baseline case.

Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) considers the key environmental impacts for the entire life cycle of alternative products or processes in order to select the best alternative. An ideal LCA would be an expensive and time consuming process because any product or process typically involves many interacting systems and a considerable amount of data must be analysed for each system. Practical LCA methods approximate the results of an ideal analysis by setting limited analysis boundaries and by accepting some uncertainty in the data values for the systems considered. However, there is no consensus in the LCA field on the correct method of selecting boundaries or on the treatment of data set uncertainty. This paper demonstrates a new method of selecting system boundaries for LCA studies and presents a brief discussion on applying Monte Carlo Analysis to treat the uncertainty questions in LCA.

This paper evaluates the total lifecycle impacts for hauling freight long distances over land in the United States. The dominant modes of surface freight transport in the United States are large motor trucks (tractor-semitrailer combinations) and trains. These vehicles account for a significant portion of the transportation sector's petroleum usage and atmospheric emissions (among which nitrogen oxides and particulate matter are especially important). The objective of this paper is to evaluate the potential for reductions in energy use (in particular, petroleum use) and atmospheric emissions that result from freight transport, possibly as the result of research and development on improved technology or alternative fuels, such as Fischer-Tropsch diesel and natural gas, or from mode shifts in competitive markets. The impacts examined include energy use, both in toto and the petroleum fraction, and emissions of greenhouse gases and nitrogen oxides and particulate matter.

The approach taken by the Ford “Design For Environment Process and Training Development” team to develop and launch a DFE program was to first, identify the target audience as primarily design, product and manufacturing process engineers, and then, to provide them with an introduction to design for the environment concepts and offer a methodology for continuous improvement that is common to the Ford design process and Ford engineering tools. This discussion will provide information on development of the DFE training, overview the recommended DFE methodology and offer a case study example of implementing DFE in products and manufacturing operations.

We compare two methods for life cycle analysis: the conventional SETAC-EPA approach and Economic Input-Output Life Cycle Analysis (EIO-LCA). The methods are compared for steel versus plastic fuel tank systems and for the entire life cycle of an automobile, from materials extraction to end of life. The EIO-LCA method gives comparable results for the data common to the two methods. EIO-LCA gives more detailed data, specifies the economy wide implications, and is much quicker and less expensive to implement.

The use of regrind acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) for automotive parts and components results in two types of financial savings. The first is the shared monetary savings between General Motors and the molder for the difference in the virgin resin price versus price of the ABS regrind. The second is a societal energy savings seen in the life cycle of virgin ABS versus reground ABS. An added benefit is the preservation of natural resources used to produce virgin ABS.