Browse Topic: Life cycle analysis
The increasing pressure to decarbonize manufacturing systems is pushing industry beyond conventional lightweighting strategies toward material and process paradigms, capable of delivering functional performance with radically lower environmental impact. In this context, polymer-based composite Additive Manufacturing (AM) offers an underexplored yet highly promising pathway for sustainable production of load-bearing components. This study presents a preliminary comparative cradle-to-gate Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of a Formula SAE brake pedal, assessing the environmental transition from conventional sheet metal fabrication and finishing operations of Aluminum 7075-T6 to additive manufacturing solutions, with specific focus on Carbon-Fiber-Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) composites. Two topology-optimized designs, respectively for Powder Bed Fusion (PBF) in AlSi10Mg and Material Extrusion (MEX) in Polyethylene Terephthalate Glycol with Carbon Fiber (PETG-CF) are compared to conventional fabrication aluminum benchmark. The analysis is integrated in the product and process design following ISO 14040/14044 standards and is implemented using the Environmental Footprint 3.0 methodology within the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. Results outline that Material Extrusion (MEX) composite manufacturing achieves the lowest environmental impact across all evaluated categories. Compared to conventional manufacturing, the PETG-CF solution enables an approximate 50% reduction in Global Warming Potential and an almost complete elimination of mineral depletion. Unlike metal additive manufacturing, which remains constrained by high process energy demand, MEX benefits from low processing temperatures, minimal auxiliary systems, and highly efficient material deposition. Crucially, these sustainability gains are achieved while maintaining functional performance through design-driven topology optimization. AM composite solutions, by merging advanced material science with additive flexibility, may lead to design approaches which cease to be ‘potential’ enablers of sustainable manufacturing for the Industry 5.0 transition.
Electrifying shared autonomous fleets (Robotaxis) presents challenges in balancing decarbonization, service quality, and operational costs, given the limited driving range, long charging times, and suboptimal planning of charging infrastructure. This study develops an integrated energy management and fleet dispatching simulation framework to support cost-effective, low-carbon Robotaxi deployment. The proposed system models both battery electric vehicles (BEV) and internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEV) technologies, and is extensible to other powertrain types. The study also integrates a life cycle assessment module to evaluate well-to-wheel carbon emissions. A total of 1,440 scenarios are designed to test the performance of two service modes (ride-hailing vs. ride-pooling) in terms of energy consumption, emissions, service quality, and operational costs, across varying levels of trip demand and market penetration of different powertrain technologies. The testing aims to verify the system’s effectiveness in improving energy efficiency, clarify the cost of autonomous vehicles electrification, and identify the most cost-effective low-carbon fleet composition under different scenarios. The results demonstrate that ride-pooling system outperforms both ride-hailing and private vehicles. Ride-pooling achieves 15–25% lower carbon intensity and 18–25% energy savings compared to private vehicles. It is also found that EVs present, on average, an 8–12% higher trip rejection rate than ICE fleets, demonstrating that electrifying Robotaxis comes at the cost of reduced service levels or increased costs. The study ultimately finds that electrifying Robotaxis at a moderate level (40–60%) can achieve a good trade-off between environmental benefits, service quality, and cost.
As part of the decarbonisation process for passenger car fleet in Austria, battery electric cars in particular have been subsidised in recent years, as these vehicles are considered to be largely emission free during use and are expected to reduce emissions in future. However, in order to sustainably reduce the global greenhouse gas emissions of Austrian passenger car traffic, taking into account all types of fuel systems, it is necessary to apply a cradle-to-grave approach, as is commonly done in comparable analyses in the literature, which evaluates the emissions of the entire vehicle life cycle. The most important phase in the life cycle assessment remains the well-to-wheel phase, which includes emissions from energy supply and vehicle use. Due to the large number of influencing factors, highly simplified models are usually used for this phase in the literature. As part of this work, a methodology was developed that, allows an in-depth analysis of entire vehicle fleets by linking real vehicle movements with emissions data and energy consumption. By using real vehicle movements, environmental conditions (ambient temperature, etc.) and traffic situations (traffic jams, etc.) can be integrated into the emissions assessment. To capture the influencing factors more realistically, the assessment is performed at hourly rather than annual time intervals, unlike most previous studies. This new approach provides therefore a more detailed and realistic cradle-to-grave analysis of the Austrian passenger car fleet, making it possible to test individual measures in future scenarios and to define a coordinated strategy for minimizing the fleet’s future global greenhouse gas emissions.
Low-Cost Mobile Hydrogen Refuelling Stations: A Cost-Effective Solution for India's Sustainable Transportation” The likely depletion of fossil fuel reserves in the next fifty years and growing environmental concerns caused by petroleum fuel-based vehicles highlight the urgent need for sustainable alternatives. India, a developing country, requires a significant amount of energy to sustain its growth, most of which is imported. Hydrogen is one of the cleanest fuels and offers sustainable pathways to a low-carbon future. The government of India has already launched a Green Hydrogen mission and has set up a very ambitious target for 2030. However, the absence of adequate refueling infrastructure is a significant blockade to India's widespread adoption of hydrogen-powered vehicles. The mobile hydrogen refueling station (MHRS) is a flexible system that enables lower initial capital costs than fixed hydrogen refueling stations and allows for the gradual build-up of hydrogen mobility fleets. Such a system could be very useful in India, and it integrates advanced safety features, including hydrogen leak detectors, pressure and temperature sensors, flame detectors, and gas composition analyzers, to ensure the safe dispensing of hydrogen. Such a system can significantly boost local economies by creating employment opportunities at various hydrogen supply chain stages and reducing air pollution. These can dispense hydrogen at both 350 bar and 700 bar pressures, ensuring compliance with international safety standards such as ISO 14687 and ISO/TR 15916. This paper studies the design and economics of a low-cost, scalable Mobile Hydrogen dispensing system. It evaluates its cost-effectiveness, scalability, safety, socio-economic, and environmental impact (using Life Cycle Analysis) in a developing country like India. The results of the study are very promising and suggest that MHRS has a sustainable future in India.
Over the decades, robotics deployments have been driven by the rapid in-parallel research advances in sensing, actuation, simulation, algorithmic control, communication, and high-performance computing among others. Collectively, their integration within a cyber-physical-systems framework has supercharged the increasingly complex realization of the real-time ‘sense-think-act’ robotics paradigm. Successful functioning of modern-day robots relies on seamless integration of increasingly complex systems (coming together at the component-, subsystem-, system- and system-of-system levels) as well as their systematic treatment throughout the life-cycle (from cradle to grave). As a consequence, ‘dependency management’ between the physical/algorithmic inter-dependencies of the multiple system elements is crucial for enabling synergistic (or managing adversarial) outcomes. Furthermore, the steep learning curve for customizing the technology for platform specific deployment discourages domain experts from rapid prototyping and validation of the technological piece. This creates a need for frameworks that can provide adequate compartmentalization for domain experts (to carry out platform agnostic research) and yet permit flexible encapsulation of multiple robotic code deployment architectures (legacy or otherwise). In this work, we explore various facets of these challenges for autonomous operations with a simulated/physical Clearpath Husky robot by developing Robot Operating System (ROS) based Docker containers, that isolate different functions of the robot operations and yet interact with each other in real-time for a synergistic deployment.
ERRATUM
Letter from the Guest Editors
Composite materials, pioneered by aerospace engineering due to their lightness, strength, and durability properties, are increasingly adopted in the high-performance automotive sector. Besides the acknowledged composite components’ performance, enabled lightweighting is becoming even more crucial for energy efficiency, and therefore emissions along vehicle use phase from a decarbonization perspective. However, their use entails energy-intensive and polluting processes involved in the production of raw materials, manufacturing processes, and particularly their end-of-life disposal. Carbon footprint is the established indicator to assess the environmental impact of climate-changing factors on products or services. Research on different carbon footprint sources reduction is increasing, and even the European Composites Industry Association is demanding the development of specific Design for Sustainability approaches. This paper analyzes the early strategies for providing low-carbon aerospace and automotive composite components by design. The goal is to enable design approaches that consider the material life cycle from product and process design, material selection and fabrication, to eventual recycling and reuse. The investigation includes the design approaches and tools, and the aspects concerning ultimate trends of materials development, shapes generation, and manufacturing processes. Among these, we discuss the potential role of emerging technologies such as digital intelligence, Biocomposites, biomimicry, generative AI, and additive manufacturing. The aim is to identify the framework of possible drivers for Design for Sustainability approaches, rethinking lightweight products lifecycles and highlighting the resulting challenges and future developments. Moreover, as practical examples, a few innovative cases are provided to prove the effective potentials of such guidelines. The conclusive remarks discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the design drivers and the need for assessment and validation through vehicle Life Cycle Assessment approaches.
The 2023 FISITA White Paper (for which the author was a contributor) on managing in-service emissions and transportation options, to reduce CO2 (CO2-e or carbon footprint) from the existing vehicle fleet, proposed 6 levers which could be activated to complement the rapid transition to vehicles using only renewable energy sources. Another management opportunity reported here is optimizing the vehicle’s life in-service to minimize the life-cycle CO2 impact of a range of present and upcoming vehicles. This study of the US vehicle fleet has quite different travel and composition characteristics to European (EU27) vehicles. In addition, the embodied CO2 is based on ANL’s GREET data rather than EU27 SimaPro methodology. It is demonstrated that in-service, whole-of-life mileage has a significant influence on the optimum life cycle CO2 for BEVs and H2 fuelled FCEVs, as well as ICEs and PHEVs. Thus, the object is to show how much present, typical in-service life-mileage differs from the optimums against a back drop of steadily improving energy efficiency, as new vehicle designs enter the market along with the greening of electric power supply and conventional fuel supply. The life cycle analysis is more than ‘well-to-wheel’ as the energy content and manufacture of consumables and recycling/reuse of vehicles (as embodied CO2) is included as new vehicles replace older, scrapped ones in the market, with improvements in energy efficiency (and reductions CO2 emissions). It is found that depending on the vehicle size and configuration, the optimum vehicle life ranges from 10 years to more than 20; significantly different from the present fleet median of 17 years. For all forms of EVs the greater the installed battery kWh or H2 tank size and hence range capability, the longer is the optimum service life. As the energy efficiency for new vehicles entering the market improves, vehicles need to stay in use for longer to amortize the embodied energy in manufacturing. It is concluded from the projection results, that PHEVs provide the best path to minimizing CO2 emissions. Across the fleet of technology types, benefits of up to 50% increase in the reduction of life cycle emissions come from optimal age recycling of the vehicle. Under these conditions of optimum age use, the switch to EVs is not so urgent when policies are in place that encourage best use of all vehicles according to their technology.
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