Environmental aspects of lightweight construction in mobility and manufacturing

Abstract

In automotive, mechanical, medical and plant engineering, and the construction industry, lightweight construction is considered one of the most important future technologies, providing good market opportunities for small and medium-sized companies. Due to the increasing relevance of energy and resource efficiency, not only technical and economic, but also environmental aspects have to be considered when assessing lightweight construction. Only with the consideration of environmental and economic aspects modern technologies can succeed in different fields of application and gain societies acceptance. In the study commissioned by the e-mobil BW GmbH in Germany, the topic of sustainability in lightweight construction is analyzed on basis of environment and health (Rommel et al. 2012). This article gives an overview on the most important findings and results of this study with special focus on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of lightweight construction considering the light weight materials steel, high performance steel, aluminum and carbon fiber composites

Prospective study of lignin-based and recycled carbon fibers in composites through meta-analysis of life cycle assessments

“…The first question that guided the extraction of information was how CFRPs perform compared with conventional materials. For this comparison, the system boundaries and functional units, as given in the original work, were kept to allow for comparisons between replacing conventional materials with CFRP in both lightweighting (Albrecht et al (2013); Das (2011); Khalil (2017); Kim (2015); Overly et al (2002); Suzuki et al (2003); Suzuki and Takahashi (2005a); Witik (2011)) and reinforcement (Hofstätter (2017) and Zhou (2013)) applications.…”

“…Studies that were found to deal exclusively with the end-of-life of CFRP (including recycling) are shown in Figure 5. One of the studies presents an average of four values but for the same type of end-of-life activity (Albrecht et al, 2013). Note that the Y-axis has been cut off for some studies.…”

Aiming for life cycle sustainability assessment of cement‐based composites: A trend study for wall systems of carbon concrete: Dresden Nexus Conference 2020—Session 4—Circular economy for building with secondary construction materials to minimise resource use and land use

“…To the best of our knowledge, no study on S‐LCA exists. For LCA, most cases refer to automotive or railway lightweight design using thermoplastics, that is, carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRPs) 31–33 . Four studies come closest to our research objectives: Williams Portal et al 34 investigated various reinforcement technologies for façade elements, among others also SRC and CCC.…”

“…For LCA, most cases refer to automotive or railway lightweight design using thermoplastics, that is, carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRPs). [31][32][33] Four studies come closest to our research objectives: Williams Portal et al 34 investigated various reinforcement technologies for façade elements, among others also SRC and CCC. CCC yielded the lowest total environmental impacts when compared by means of cradle-to-gate LCA.…”

Modelling the deformation of continuous fibre-reinforced thermoplastics subjected to hygrothermal loading

“…1,2 Advantages of lightweight design include the legally required reduction of CO 2 emissions, enhanced driving performance or higher payload. 1,[3][4][5] Fibre-reinforced plastics (FRPs) are particularly well suited for lightweight design because of their excellent mechanical properties with respect to their density. 6 Furthermore, the anisotropy of FRPs makes it possible to tailor strength and stiffness along load paths to achieve desired overall structural properties.…”