Neutral lightweight engineering: a holistic approach towards sustainability driven engineering

Abstract

The continuously growing social and political pressure to provide sustainable products is forcing also the lightweight industry to rethink current development and manufacturing processes. While established development approaches in lightweight engineering mainly focus on technical and economical product requirements they usually do not consider sustainability criteria. To address these challenges, a new class within the lightweight disciplines is proposed—the Neutral Lightweight Engineering. Its basic goal is to integrate sustainability criteria in all decisions along the development chain of a lightweight component. The decision makers in lightweight engineering thereby have to consider the whole life cycle of a product system from material sourcing to end-of-life part management. To implement this idea, advanced development methods are necessary, using established and emerging materials as well as efficient production and end-of-life strategies. This concept article introduces the idea of Neutral Lightweight Engineering and exemplary highlights some of its aspects before the background of scientific literature.

Identification of circular eco-subsystems for end-of-life aviation composite components based on a systematized R6-strategy

“…According to Potting et al [15] there are ten R-strategies available to implement the strategic circular approach for aviation composites. They aim to extend a product's lifespan, to reduce natural resource consumption and to minimize emissions [17]. The R-strategies refuse (R0), rethink (R1), reduce (R2) and recover (R9) are not expedient for the context of this article.…”

Systems thinking towards holistic, sustainability-oriented assessment and decision-making for lightweighting

“…The research of Herrmann et al situated lightweight structures within four physical process stages (raw materials extraction, manufacturing, usage, and end-of-life) as a 'product system'. While these could be considered as appropriate lightweight product system 'elements', further research suggests that representing only a physical life-phase breakdown offers insufficient granularity to assess lightweighting robustly, and that stages/ phases and activities relating to the product's cognitive existence (e.g., in Design) should also be accounted for (Kupfer et al, 2022). Mapping of prevalent phases and activities of lightweighting could give an indication of the most functional delineations by which to represent 'elements' of lightweighting, alongside the end-product.…”

“…As previously evidenced, within this research's context, the Earth as a system is understood by humanity's interpretation of its goals, its sub-systems or elements, and the behaviour of the system and its sub-structures. Humans have linked their goal for the Earth (which lightweighting as a connected system can affect) to fulfilling their needs, the Earth doing so relatively well in its current form, inciting a sustained need to do so, and sustainability remaining a persistent, common goal across all stakeholders (Kupfer et al, 2022), despite perceptively there being multiple, dynamic goals. Through ST, Earth System (ES) structural elements of relevance on its stable, sustainability-oriented behaviour to fulfil human needs may be identified, which are conducive to exposing S-O assessment parameter category requirements of lightweighting performance or impact across interactions therewith.…”

“…Within the automotive industry, lightweighting is key to meet environmental standards and improve performance with manufacturers "expressing a high level of confidence in lightweighting" and "49% of companies surveyed sa [ying] that lightweighting is their main strategy" (Isenstadt et al, 2016). It has been echoed that "aerospace has been on the lightweight path since its origin" (Czerwinski, 2021), and that lightweighting is key for clean energy technologies e.g., wind turbines (Kupfer et al, 2022). This lightweighting popularity has broadly been reported as attributable to achieving sustainability-aligned performance desires, across sectors with profound global impact.…”

“…Despite the increased use of lightweighting over the past three decades, continued climate change exacerbations indicate that "existing pattern [s] of development, production, and consumption [remain] unsustainable" (Roy, 2021). Kupfer et al (2022), recently, acknowledged that "pressure to provide sustainable products is forcing the lightweight industry to rethink […] to integrate sustainability criteria in all decisions". There is opportunity to augment lightweighting towards sustainability, and explore where current shortcomings may lie.…”