Abstract
The automotive lightweighting trends, being driven by sustainability, cost, and performance, that create the enormous demand for lightweight materials and design concepts, are assessed as a part of the circular economy solutions in modern mobility and transportation. The current strategies that aim beyond the basic weight reduction and cover also the structural efficiency as well as the economic and environmental impact are explained with an essence of guidelines for materials selection with an eco-friendly approach, substitution rules, and a paradigm of the multi-material design. Particular attention is paid to the metallic alloys sector and progress in global R&D activities that cover the “lightweight steel”, conventional aluminum, and magnesium alloys, together with well-established technologies of components manufacturing and future-oriented solutions, and with both adjusting to a transition from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles. Moreover, opportunities and challenges that the lightweighting creates are discussed with strategies of achieving its goals through structural engineering, including the metal-matrix composites, laminates, sandwich structures, and bionic-inspired archetypes. The profound role of the aerospace and car-racing industries is emphasized as the key drivers of lightweighting in mainstream automotive vehicles.
Highlights
Lightweighting is becoming the major trend, reaching many industrial sectors associated with all forms of transportation but more broadly with civil infrastructure, manufacturing, and clean energy technologies [1]
Lightweighting is not a new concept and aerospace has been on the lightweight path since its origin, while other sectors have pursued it for decades, it is re-emerging as the mature, enormous growth course that is driven by sustainability, cost, and performance
The assessment considers the impacts from the manufacturing stage, with material production and vehicle assembly; through to the use stage, with fuel production and combustion; and to the EOL stage, with final disposal and recycling. This is valid for electric vehicles: they produce just one-third of the lifetime emissions of internal combustion engine cars, electric vehicles maintain the CO2 footprint created in the mining, manufacturing, shipping, and recycling of the vehicle components
Summary
Lightweighting is becoming the major trend, reaching many industrial sectors associated with all forms of transportation but more broadly with civil infrastructure, manufacturing, and clean energy technologies [1]. The material selection has many aspects and just increasing its strength alone leads to a design weight reduction without changing its specific density. Through exploring this factor and using the high strength, Nb-containing weathering steel for, currently, the tallest bridge in the world, Viaduct de Millau, France, allowed for the reduction of its overall weight by 60% and for the related carbon footprint through fabrication, welding, construction, and transportation [3]. Reduction is aIt core part of the statement, expressed by global automakers, that the vehicle weight reduction is a targets core of overall technology strategy that the industry will utilize to achieve the future part of the overall technology strategy that the industry will utilize to achieve the future energy consumption, emissions, safety, and affordability.
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