Advances in Engineering Advances in Engineering features breaking research judged by Advances in Engineering advisory team to be of key importance in the Engineering field. Papers are selected from over 10,000 published each week from most peer reviewed journals.
Significance
Increasing stringent emissions rules has favored the development of standards for newly produced vehicles. Part of these regulations requires carmakers to adopt fuel economy improvement strategies in their vehicles. To achieve these standards, development of alternative powertrain technologies and lightweight automotive parts is highly desirable, therefore, leading to an increase in the research and development investments. Presently, steel is the main materials used in the manufacturing of vehicles bodies. Recent research has shown that replacing steel materials with lightweight alternatives will reduce fuel consumption by up to 42% and also increase the part-level weight savings up to 70%.
Among the available lightweight materials, advanced high strength steel, carbon fiber reinforced polymer and aluminum steels have attracted research attention. In particular, carbon fiber reinforced polymers offer the greatest potential weight reduction. However, carbon fiber reinforced polymer cannot be compared to metals in terms of efficiency and cost-effectiveness. To this end, considerable efforts have been made to enhance the development of efficient carbon fiber manufacturing technologies by reducing the cycle times and waste management practices focusing majorly on the reuse and recycling. This would encourage the use of recycled carbon fibers as an alternative to virgin carbon fibers.
Environmental performance of various lightweighted material applications for manufacturing of individual automotive components is determined using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies. Unfortunately, this is only limited to metal-based lightweight materials. Despite extensive research on the environmental performance of carbon fiber reinforced polymer parts, the life cycle assessment on the individual parts have not been fully explored due to the heterogeneity of carbon fiber production and confidentiality issues.
Recently, Umea University researchers: Kavitha Shanmugam (Ph.D. student), Dr. Venkataramana Gadhamshetty, Pooja Yadav, Dimitris Athanassiadis, Dr. Mats Tysklind, and Dr. Venkata Upadhyayula assessed the environmental performance of carbon fiber reinforced polymer bodies in white (BIWs), since it offers the greatest potential weight savings. Fundamentally, they conducted a detailed cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment of advanced high strength steel and carbon fiber-reinforced composite for three different vehicles propulsion modes: battery electric vehicles, gasoline-fueled cars, and bioethanol fueled cars. Eventually, they compared the environmental performance in all the three modes to mild steel body in whites and also evaluated the return on investment in each case. The work is currently published in the journal, ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering.
The authors observed that the carbon fiber body in white reinforced polymer exhibited the worst environmental performance as compared to the mild steel body in white, ascribed to the release of atmospheric pollutants like ammonia during the carbon fiber manufacturing process. Consequently, carbon fiber reinforced polymer body in whites exhibited a low sustainable return on investment for gasoline- and bioethanol fueled cars while advanced high strength steel performed best in battery electric vehicles thus showing high fuel-saving potential. Furthermore, the sustainable return on investment value was determined for the three different propulsion modes recoding a range of 0.54 to 3.13. It was worth noting that advanced high strength steels and carbon fiber reinforced polymers were best preferred for electric vehicle and gasoline engines respectively. Altogether, the study provides essential information that will help identify light-weighting material strategies for propulsion modes of operation. This will improve fuel economy and thus reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
Reference
Shanmugam, K., Gadhamshetty, V., Yadav, P., Athanassiadis, D., Tysklind, M., & Upadhyayula, V. (2019). Advanced High-Strength Steel and Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer Composite Body in White for Passenger Cars: Environmental Performance and Sustainable Return on Investment under Different Propulsion Modes. ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, 7(5), 4951-4963.
Go To ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering