DESIGN FOR SUSTAINABILITY: PRODUCT LIFE-CYCLE ANALYSIS IN ALUMINUM AUTO BODY APPLICATIONS

The scope of this work is to generate quantifiable measures of sustainability elements that apply to manufactured products in terms of environmental, social and economic benefits. This thesis presents a comprehensive analysis for developing a methodology to compare the costs encountered by a vehicle over its entire life-cycle (Pre-manufacturing, Manufacturing, Use, and Post-use stages), considering two different material scenarios, aluminum versus steel, used in body-in-white (BIW) structures and exterior body panels. The potential benefits of using lighter materials in auto body applications are further evaluated through a Sustainability Scoring method. The proposed six major integral sustainable elements considered in this work are: products environmental impact, societal impact, functionality, resource utilization and economy, manufacturability and recyclability/remanufacturability. Each of these elements has corresponding sub-elements and influencing factors which are categorized as having equal importance to the product