Life cycle assessment in the development process of lightweight railway vehicles using sensitivity analysis

Soenke Kraft ()
Additional contact information
Soenke Kraft: Luiss University

Environment Systems and Decisions, 2024, vol. 44, issue 3, 527-546

Abstract: Abstract According to EU policy goals, railway shall become the main pillar of a sustainable and smart mobility. This works outlines how the environmental sustainability of railway vehicles can be further improved by integrating Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in the simulation-based design process of lightweight railway vehicles and by considering environmental sustainability as an equal criterion for the design optimisation. The LCA for lightweight railway vehicles considering the manufacturing, operation and recycling phases is performed using a LCA tool. To link the LCA tool with the simulation-based development process of the vehicle, an interface is implemented. Process and vehicle parameters coming from the development process as well as datasets from LCA databases are used to parameterize the LCA model. By applying local and global sensitivity analyses, the most influencing design parameters with respect to the environmental impact can be identified and the effect of uncertainties studied. Based on the results, the environmental sustainability of the vehicle design can be optimised. The development process including LCA is illustrated for the application case of a railway vehicle bogie, exposed to high loads and design requirements. Different design configurations based on steel and carbon fibre composites are compared. For the assumed energy supply, it is the found that reduction in energy consumption during the operation phase overcompensates for energy-intensive production and recycling of carbon fibre composites.

Keywords: Sustainable mobility; Railway vehicles; Lightweight design; Development process; Sensitivity analysis; Uncertainties (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10669-023-09955-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:envsyd:v:44:y:2024:i:3:d:10.1007_s10669-023-09955-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer.com/journal/10669

DOI: 10.1007/s10669-023-09955-6

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment Systems and Decisions from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().