Date of Award
5-2012
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Legacy Department
Automotive Engineering
Committee Chair/Advisor
Omar, Mohammed A
Committee Member
Kurfess , Thomas R
Committee Member
Pisu , Pierluigi
Committee Member
Abu-Farha , Fadi
Abstract
The goal of this work is to establish a set of quantifiable measures for design for sustainability (DFS) that can be applied to automotive applications in terms of environmental, social, economic and technical aspects. In this study, a comprehensive analysis was made in order to develop a methodology that can evaluate different body-in-white designs in terms of major sustainability aspects. Besides the complete life cycle analysis, environmental impacts and cost factors will be analyzed over vehicle's entire life-cycle (fuel extraction and refining, Pre-manufacturing, Manufacturing, Use, and
Post-use stages). The considered material options include: conventional steel, high strength steel, aluminum, magnesium, titanium and composites that are currently used in body-in-white (BIW) structures and exterior body panels. Sustainability scoring method was developed and used to decide on how using lighter materials in auto body applications is beneficial or not. The proposed major sustainable factors are categorized into four major groups: environmental, economical, social and technical groups. Also, each group has corresponding factors which were chosen by extensive search and screening, so only important sustainability aspects for auto body design have been selected in this study. Then the dissertation proceeds to show some sustainability scoring
methods in order to get better understanding as well as relative ranking for different materials from sustainability point of view.
Moreover, this work discusses the role and application of some multi-criteria decision making methods in materials selection, namely quality function deployment (QFD) and analytic hierarchy process (AHP). However, multi-criteria decision making methods are efficient tools to choose alternative from large set of alternatives, especially when two or more conflicting goals are present. Besides that, knowledge based system (KBS) was established for eco-material selection for auto-body structural panels. The goal behind
using KBS is to help designers in material selection process which usually needs experience, time and effort.
Recommended Citation
Mayyas, Ahmad, "EXPERT SYSTEM BASED APPROACH FOR MATERIAL SELECTION OF AUTOMOBILE BODY-IN-WHITE STRUCTURAL PANELS USING NUMERICAL RANKING AND SUSTAINABILITY INDICES" (2012). All Dissertations. 886.
https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_dissertations/886