Life Cycle Assessment of Advanced Materials for Automotive Applications

摘要

Substituting alternative materials for conventional materials in automotive applications is an important strategy for reducing environmental burdens over the entire life cycle through weight reduction. Strong, light carbon composites and lightweight metals can potentially be used for components such as body structure, chassis parts, brakes, tie rods, or instrument panel structural beams. There are also proposed uses in conventional and alternative powered vehicles for other advanced materials, including synthetic graphite, titanium, and metals coated with graphite composite, that have special strength, hardness, corrosion resistance, or conductivity properties. The approach use din this paper was to compare the environmental life cycle inventory of pats made form carbon fiber-thermoplastic composites, synthetic graphite, titanium, and graphite coated aluminum, with parts made form conventional steel or aluminum.