Authors
Gerbinet, Saïcha; Groslambert, Sylvie; Fraselle, Justin; Koutla, Ioanna; Stroobants, Jan; Effing, Michael; de Bruijn, Freek; Heijster, Jean-Pierre; Eyckens, Philip; Cambier, Frédérik; Duysinx, Pierre; Duysinx, Pierre
Abstract
The objective of this study is to determine how changes in materials and design could influence the weight and the environmental performances of some vehicle components. Four case studies are especially studied: – An anti-roll bar – A hydrogen tank – A gearbox – A truck door These case studies have been developed during the Light Vehicle 2025 Interreg project (Euregio Meuse-Rhine). The objective of this project is to develop safer, lighter and more fun to drive vehicles thanks to lightweight materials and optimized designs. For these four case studies two LCA have been conducted with different systems boundaries. The first system boundaries including only the studied part from cradle-to-gate. The second system boundaries study the complete LCA of the vehicle, from its production to its use phase. The idea is to compare the conventional components with optimized one for weight reduction. Depending on the case studies, this weight reduction could be achieved by a change of materials/design or by a change of production process. The presentation will illustrate how LCA could help to design and to avoid impact transfer by showing the case studies results and the comparison with conventional components. For example, the anti-roll case study shows that the lightweighting (thanks to a change of materials) allows an impact reduction in all the categories if only the anti-roll system is considered but its contribution to the complete life cycle of a car is too small to be significant if the complete life cycle is considered. In this specific case, the LCA allows to underline that there is no impact transfer by the change of materials but the normalization underlines the large importance of resource categories in this specific case study (using environmental footprint V2 method). The results of the other case studies will allow a better understanding of the influence of vehicle lightweighting on the environment.