Simon Merschak

The importance of a centralized data storage system for life cycle assessment (LCA) will be addressed in this paper. Further, the decision-making process for a suitable data storage system is discussed. LCA requires a lot of relevant data such as resource/material data, production process data and logistics data, originating from many different sources, which must be integrated. Therefore, data collection for LCA is quite difficult. In practice, relevant data for LCA is often not available or is uncertain and has therefore to be estimated or generalized. This implies less accuracy of the calculated carbon footprint. State of the Art research shows that the LCA data collection process can benefit from data engineering approaches. Key of these approaches is a suitable and efficient data storage system like a data warehouse or a data lake. Depending on the LCA use case, a data storage system can also benefit from the combination with other technologies such as big data and cloud computing. As a result, in this paper a criteria catalog is developed and presented. It can be used to evaluate and decide which data storage systems and additional technologies are recommended to store and process data for more efficient and more precise carbon footprint calculation in life cycle assessment.

During the design process of mechatronic systems, several decisions are necessary for the optimisation of the final product. A decision support process is therefore needed to help in the choice of a satisfactory solution. In this paper, we propose an approach to integrate the performance criteria of the three sustainability dimensions in the design process of mechatronic systems. The proposed approach considers all lifecycle phases to prevent the phenomenon of impact transfer. It also uses a decision support method to assist the process of selection and calculation of different indicators for each alternative and the comparative analysis of the different investigated alternatives. The used research methodology starts with a literature review with the definition of specific LCSA methods followed by a prescriptive study establishing the process model and an empirical study on uses cases. The proposed approach is applied in a case study analysing two concepts of milk frother.

Digitization has gradually emerged in the industry, research institutions, and universities to change the traditional practice. The objective of the paper is to study the influence of digitization on mechatronics education programs. One mechatronics program in Austria and one in Taiwan were compared, and the similarities and differences between the two are presented. A case study about a ducted fan system was used to illustrate how to build a digital twin demonstrator for the system and find out its remaining useful life model. The results show that the digitization started to improve mechatronics education through system simulation in both Austria and Taiwan.

To ensure a faultless operation of an inductive component and to optimize the efficiency, the thermal behavior of the component has to be considered in an early design phase. In a previous project, a computer aided design tool for inductors was developed. In this tool thermal network models are used to calculate the thermal behavior. Therefore thermal resistance values of all winding materials are required and have to be measured. A measurement setup for the measurement of thermal resistances was developed, built and tested. In this paper the used measurement principle and the consideration of systematic measurement errors are described. A finite element method (FEM) simulation of the measurement setup is used to verify the calculation of the thermal resistance values.

The purpose of this work is to point out the importance of the production phase for the carbon footprint calculation of powertrain components and to improve the understanding of necessary data for this calculation. Evaluation of lifecycle assessment data from numerous studies showed, that there is often a shift from the emissions in the use phase to emissions in the production phase, when alternative powertrain concepts are used. Therefore, in this work our focus is on the carbon emissions in the production phase of powertrain components. Data of raw materials used, production processes and supply chains is necessary and the uncertainties associated also have to be considered. At present, there is only little sufficient support for design engineers regarding the collection of relevant data for the carbon footprint calculation of powertrain production. In this work a data structure, which supports the collection of relevant data, including possible data sources, is presented.