Evaluation of steel products as a base for environmentally sound product design

A joint research project at Darmstadt University of Technology currently aims at developing a product development environment with an integrated LCA tool allowing the designer to identify, "environmental impact drivers" of a product before the product is manufactured. This prospective approach should contribute to an efficient and holistic environmentally sound product design since designers mainly act on experience. Materials selection has a definite impact on the environmental burden caused during a products' life cycle. Therefore, designers should take environmental aspects as well as mechanical characteristics and costs into account when choosing certain materials for a product. This paper presents a new approach for the environmental evaluation of materials, especially for steel. The idea is to deduct shape-related environmental parameters using steel life cycle inventory (LCI) data in order to obtain specific inventory data for products. This specific steel data is then processed together with other essential information of the entire life cycle in the LCA tool.