TY - GEN
T1 - Development of a sustainability scoring method for manufactured automotive products
T2 - ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, IMECE 2007
AU - Ungureanu, C. A.
AU - Das, S.
AU - Jawahir, I. S.
PY - 2008
Y1 - 2008
N2 - Undoubtedly, motor vehicles are among the most important, yet difficult to maintain and environmentally damaging consumer products on the planet. In light of the ongoing climate change discussion, sustainability considerations are currently taking a more prominent role in material selection decisions for automotive applications. This paper presents a new sustainability evaluation methodology for computing the potential benefits of using lighter materials, such as aluminum, in auto body applications, through a "Sustainability Scoring" method. When evaluating the "level of sustainability" built in any product, several major contributing factors (sustainability elements) need to be taken into consideration. Six major integral sustainability elements considered in this work are: product's environmental impact, societal impact, functionality, resource utilization and economy, manufacturability and recyclability/remanufacturability. Each of these elements has corresponding sub-elements and influencing factors which are categorized as having varying levels of importance to the product. The paper compares the use of aluminum with the traditional use of steel alloys in a given automotive application using the newly developed comprehensive sustainability scoring method by considering all sustainability elements and sub-elements associated with a vehicle over its total life-cycle.
AB - Undoubtedly, motor vehicles are among the most important, yet difficult to maintain and environmentally damaging consumer products on the planet. In light of the ongoing climate change discussion, sustainability considerations are currently taking a more prominent role in material selection decisions for automotive applications. This paper presents a new sustainability evaluation methodology for computing the potential benefits of using lighter materials, such as aluminum, in auto body applications, through a "Sustainability Scoring" method. When evaluating the "level of sustainability" built in any product, several major contributing factors (sustainability elements) need to be taken into consideration. Six major integral sustainability elements considered in this work are: product's environmental impact, societal impact, functionality, resource utilization and economy, manufacturability and recyclability/remanufacturability. Each of these elements has corresponding sub-elements and influencing factors which are categorized as having varying levels of importance to the product. The paper compares the use of aluminum with the traditional use of steel alloys in a given automotive application using the newly developed comprehensive sustainability scoring method by considering all sustainability elements and sub-elements associated with a vehicle over its total life-cycle.
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U2 - 10.1115/IMECE2007-43818
DO - 10.1115/IMECE2007-43818
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:44349162990
SN - 0791843092
SN - 9780791843093
T3 - ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, Proceedings
SP - 309
EP - 314
BT - Proceedings of the ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, IMECE 2007
Y2 - 11 November 2007 through 15 November 2007
ER -
