Digital platform for data-driven and physics-based product development enabling a circular economy

The urgency to address the environmental impact of the prevailing linear economic paradigm has intensified, stressing the need for optimizing resource utilization, minimizing waste, and maximizing product value to achieve ecological and economic benefits. This is particularly critical in the automotive industry, where a significant volume of primary materials is employed.

Recycling scrap materials in this sector can yield impressive 85% reduction in CO2 emissions.

However, designing automotive parts for circularity requires innovative (1) tools and infrastructures to close current information gaps as well as (2) multi-purpose alloys with enhanced compatibility and processibility for scrap materials to increase recyclability of materials.

This requires a comprehensive consideration of life cycle scenarios, potential constraints on recycled material, and adherence to changing standards and regulations.

Digi4Circular project tackles these challenges by creating a robust digital workflow for circular product development integrated into the Synera low code platform, demonstrated on aluminium casting use case in the automotive sector.

Through automated workflows, the project facilitates the generation of circular product designs and manufacturing possibilities, contingent on environmental impact assessments for different end-of-life scenarios.

The approach relies on novel methods for material design and property prediction of circular alloys, rapid LCA and LCC analysis, knowledge extraction from norms and expert know-how, integrated by rule- and knowledge-based systems for automated product design generation.

The workflow connects all necessary software tools and data generated throughout the value chain in a dedicated information space, whereas life cycle data for individual products is systematically stored in a Digital Product Passport accessible for all developers in the value chain.