Sustainability Assessment of Remanufacturing Waste Sheet Steel Into Angle Mesh Steel

Abstract

In this article, an application of metal forming by a roll-forming process was performed to produce angle mesh steel (AMS) sections from mesh steel strips that were remanufactured from waste steel sheet (WSS) recovered from end-of-life passenger cars. To evaluate the overall sustainability of this remanufacturing process, six different meshing ratios (1.75, 2.19, 4.75, 5.94, 9.75, and 12.19) of AMS, corresponding to the degree of added value, were applied to compare the sustainability of AMS and WSS. AMS remanufacturing can be achieved with high technical, economic, and environmental indices of 0.87, 0.96, and 0.98, respectively. The low social sustainability index of 0.23–0.34 indicates that there is still much scope for employment, human development, and experience accumulation to be exploited. This low social index threshold range does not affect the high overall sustainability index (0.75–0.85), which shows that remanufacturing of end-of-life passenger car WSS into AMS is a multiple-bottom-line sustainable development process. This article contributes to increasing the sustainability of the automotive industry by providing profitable applications of recovered WSS to avoid recycling or landfill.