In January 2026, our research assistant Moritz Ostermann was awarded the Best Paper Award for his publication “Life cycle engineering of lightweight structures in vehicles for on-demand mobility services” at the graduation ceremony of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at Paderborn University. The “Faculty Best Paper Award” is presented annually to recognize an outstanding publication by young researchers from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. The paper was written in collaboration with Eric Dierkes, Thorsten Marten, and Thomas Tröster (all from LiA) and was published in the international journal Cleaner Engineering and Technology by Elsevier Publishing.
The paper presents a method for the life cycle assessment (LCA) based development of lightweight vehicle structures for various mobility applications, in particular on-demand mobility services. The aim is to integrate life cycle environmental impacts into the product development process, considering interactions at component, vehicle, and mobility system levels, for example for selection of materials and manufacturing processes. A case study shows that the design, usage, and operating profiles of vehicles in different mobility applications can have a significant effect on the environmental impacts of lightweight design measures. The results illustrate that although the use of structural components in vehicles for on-demand mobility services can lead to increased absolute energy demand in the use phase, the environmental impact in relation to the transport service provided can be lower than that of privately used vehicles. Due to more dynamic driving profiles and more intensive use phases of vehicles in on-demand services, the usage of lightweight materials such as aluminum and hybrid materials made of steel and fiber-reinforced plastics can lead to reduced environmental impacts of the components installed in them. With these and further findings, the work contributes methodically and with quantitative results to decision support in life cycle engineering of vehicle structures.
The complete paper is freely available as an open access publication from Elsevier Publishing and can be accessed via this link.
We would like to express our sincere thanks to the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and the selection committee for recognizing our work, awarding us this prize, and presenting it to us at the graduation ceremony.
