The Need for a Life Cycle Approach on the Material Selection: a Case Study of an Automobile Fender

The design stage of a product highly influences the products economic and environmental impacts throughout its life cycle. Therefore, decisions during this stage must be taken considering all possible information. The aim of this paper is to confirm the importance of analysing a product in an early stage of its development on a life cycle perspective. A case study was developed to outline this importance, considering the material selection of an automobile front fender. A set of candidate materials with different characteristics technologically suitable for an automobile fender were selected to analyse. The selection varied from mild steel to ultra strength steel and aluminium alloys. Starting from the most basic decision criterion, the material specific market cost, additional analysis were performed, including life cycle cost and environmental assessment, verifying that the "best material" considering different approaches is not always the same. The most economic material during production stage may not be the most economic one during the in-use stage and may also not be the most ecological one. Thus, life cycle approaches integrating the companies' strategies allow more conscious and informed decisions during product design stages.

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