Abstract
To enable the consideration of life cycle environmental impacts in the early stages of vehicle design, a methodology using the proxy of life cycle energy is proposed in this paper. The trade-offs in energy between vehicle production, operational performance and end-of-life are formulated as a mathematical problem, and simultaneously balanced with other transport-related functionalities, and may be optimised. The methodology is illustrated through an example design study, which is deliberately kept simple in order to emphasise the conceptual idea. The obtained optimisation results demonstrate that there is a unique driving-scenario-specific design solution, which meets functional requirements with a minimum life cycle energy cost. The results also suggest that a use-phase focussed design may result in a solution, which is sub-optimal from a life cycle point-of-view.
Highlights
A major challenge in vehicle design today is to simultaneously meet the transport needs of society while minimising energy use and its associated environmental impacts
From the results presented above, it is clear that the choice of the life cycle energy as an objective function, changes the design even in this simplified example
In this paper a life cycle energy optimisation methodology has been presented and applied in a proof-of-concept example, which looks at the low-energy design of a vehicle sub-functional unit, i.e. a sandwich panel for use as a car roof
Summary
A major challenge in vehicle design today is to simultaneously meet the transport needs of society while minimising energy use and its associated environmental impacts. Efforts to reduce the environmental impacts of transport vehicles have been increasing over the past few decades. This challenge cannot be met by further extrapolating existing vehicle technologies alone. Requires balancing a large number of economic, environmental and technical parameters. These parameters interact with each other in often quite complex and conflicting ways. The aim of this current work is to propose a new conceptual approach in which these trade-off considerations can be balanced so as to enable the emergence of new vehicle designs that have significantly lower environmental impacts
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