Comparative Evaluation of Environmental Impact for Assembly Parts of Various Materials

Abstract

In the race of industrialization and production of goods and services that enrich our life, it seems that mankind is usually unconcerned about the most valuable natural environment. The environmental impact of products and processes has become a key issue. The various materials used for manufacturing the parts of any product produces emissions during their manufacturing. The objective of this work is to perform the investigations of environmental impact during the manufacturing of parts of various material of Transmission group of 'Activa'. The work has been carried out for quantitative evaluation of environmental impacts for various impact categories under 'cradle-to-gate'using the scientific approach of life cycle assessment (LCA) through LCA method 'EDIP-03'. It has been carried out using the designed & developed software 'SSLCASoft'. The major portion of 'Transmission Group' of 'Activa' has steel parts, next is rubber parts and then aluminium parts. During the manufacturing (i.e. life cycle stages from 'cradle to gate') of parts of various subassemblies of 'Transmission Group', It has the prominent impact and more affected impact categories are ecotoxicity water chronic (EWC), ecotoxicity water acute (EWA) and human toxicity air (HTA). The subassemblies of 'Transmission Group' having rubber parts have prominent impact. This is just due to some substances only having higher impact values, otherwise steel parts having dominating impact indicators.This assessment concludes the comparative analysis regarding environmental impact of different materials used. There is a major scope of improving the environmental impact at the design stage by selecting the suitable material without affecting the functional requirement of the part/ subassembly.