Gearbox Life Cycle Assessment

Abstract

Sustainable production has been attracting more and more attention nowadays. Gearbox is a widely applied mechanical engineering product. However, little work of life cycle assessment (LCA) aimed at the gearbox could be found in the literature. This paper presents a LCA of gearbox to fill in the gap. The life cycle of the gearbox is modelled parametrically with a three-tier approach. Eco-impact caused by human labour is considered in the LCA. The LCA is conducted using a popular LCA software, SimaPro, and a widely accepted life cycle impact assessment method, ReCiPe. Based on analysis of the results, optimisation plans are proposed at the end.