A study on sustainability assessment of welding processes

Abstract

The concept of “sustainability” has recently risen to take the old concept of going “green” further. This article presents general methodologies for sustainability assessments. These were then adapted to measure and assess the sustainability of welding processes through building a complete framework, to determine the best welding process for a particular application. To apply this methodology, data about the welding processes would be collected and segregated into four categories: environmental impact, economic impact, social impact, and physical performance. The performance of each category would then be aggregated into a single sustainability score. To demonstrate the capability of this methodology, case studies of three different welding processes were performed. Friction stir welding obtained the highest overall sustainability score compared to gas tungsten arc welding and gas metal arc welding.

Sustainable Manufacturing Technologies: A Systematic Review of Latest Trends and Themes

“…cloud manufacturing [169,170], intelligent manufacturing systems and metaheuristics [171,172], and Maintenance 4.0 [173] will not only catalyse implementation and dissemination of SM process technologies but also provide meaningful contributions to various SM aspects, including facilitation of remanufacturing [174], optimisation of manufacturing process parameters for sustainability improvements [172], and robotic automation [175]. Ultimately, sustainability assessment is another key pillar of SM [124], which will provide the means for sustainability impact monitoring, decision-making, and continuous improvement through life-cycle assessment (LCA) [136]; multicriteria process parameter analysis and decision-making (MCDM) techniques [176]; and various algorithm-based optimisation approaches [177]. The digital manufacturing technologies, such as data analytics architectures [168], cloud manufacturing [169,170], intelligent manufacturing systems and metaheuristics [171,172], and Maintenance 4.0 [173] will not only catalyse implementation and dissemination of SM process technologies but also provide meaningful contributions to various SM aspects, including facilitation of remanufacturing [174], optimisation of manufacturing process parameters for sustainability improvements [172], and robotic automation [175].…”

“…Welding, as an influential process for various manufacturing sectors [27], received significant attention. Sustainability assessment, multicriteria decision-making (MCDM), and welding process parameter optimisation studies for sustainability improvements were carried out for friction stir welding (FSW) [96,119,120], gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) [121][122][123], gas metal arc welding (GMAW) [79,124], and laser beam welding (LBW) [108,125].…”

“…Ultimately, sustainability assessment is another key pillar of SM [124], which will provide the means for sustainability impact monitoring, decision-making, and continuous improvement through life-cycle assessment (LCA) [136]; multicriteria process parameter analysis and decision-making (MCDM) techniques [176]; and various algorithm-based optimisation approaches [177].…”

Sustainability of Fusion and Solid-State Welding Process in the Era of Industry 4.0

“…Even though the parameter optimization and corresponding prediction of the characteristics has been done, still one has to see these welding processes from the sustainability viewpoint. Jamal et al (2020) have done sustainability assessment for Where S=SD E is the value of attribute of economic issues (E) with respect to S/SD assessment S=SD S is the value of attribute of social issues (S) with respect to S/SD assessment S=SD N is the value of attribute of environmental issues (N) with respect to S/SD assessment w E , w S, and w N are the relative weights of the economic, societal, and environmental issues, respectively. These are estimated using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and determine the S/SD index of the manufacturing enterprise.…”

“…Category scores for fusion and solid-state welding processes(Jamal et al 2020) They have considered weld yield strength and toughness under physical performance; carbon footprint, material wastage auxiliary material usage, and weld emissions under environmental impact; cost of consumables, labor, energy, welded part, and equipment under economic impact; and finally incident rate under social impact. After that normalization has been made for above indicators by assigning weights for each category.…”