Sustainable design: An integrated approach for lightweighting components in the automotive sector

Abstract

In past years the European Union (EU) set targets to reduce emissions in order to encourage and develop a more sustainable society. As a consequence of this, the carmakers began to study new materials and innovative technologies in order to lightweight their vehicles, thus reducing use stage fuel consumption and environmental impact. A promising strategy for this is replacing steel with composites although the adoption of these materials often involves negative effects on production and End-of-Life (EoL) stages. For this reason, a comprehensive assessment of the entire component Life Cycle (LC) is needed, not only in terms of environmental issues but also economic and social ones. This paper presents a sustainable design approach based on TOPSIS methodology functional to compare different design solutions in the automotive sector; the approach is also validated by an application to a real case study.