PSI - Issue 38

Nitish Shetye et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 38 (2022) 538–545 Shetye et al. / Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2021) 000 – 000

539

2

1. Introduction The demand of steel is influenced by the population of the world and the per-capita consumption. The current population of the world in 2020 is 7.8 billion and it is estimated that by 2050 the population will increase to 9.8 billion, (UN, 2020). With the increase in population and per-capita consumption, the demand for steel is increasing significantly. It is projected that by the year 2050, 2800 Mtonnes of steel will be required as depicted in Figure 1. It is also projected that the percentage of recycled steel would increase to 50% in 2050.

Figure 1. Steel Demand Projection, courtesy of (SSAB, 2017).

The steel industry is one of the most energy consuming and carbon dioxide emitting industries in the world. The steel industry alone acco unts for 7% of total global CO2 emissions. Although SSAB’s current steel production ( SSAB, 2017) process is relatively carbon e ffi cient, SSAB alone accounts for 10% of Sweden’s and 7% of Finland’s CO2 emissions, (SSAB, 2017). Due to the Paris agreement and U N’s sustainability goals, it is critical to reduce these emissions which also relate to reducing the energy consumption by switching to more energy e ffi cient alternatives. HYBRIT (Hydrogen Breakthrough Ironmaking Technology) is a joint venture between SSAB, LKAB and Vattenfall for developing a fossil-free steel technology. It aims to replace coal with hydrogen during steel production to reduce CO2 emissions. The aim of the current study is to compare the life-cycle energy required for Conventional Steel and H YBRIT Steel. The application chosen for this comparison was a bogie beam of Volvo’s articulated hauler A30. 2. Application – Volvo Articulated Hauler bogie beam An articulated hauler is a heavy-duty dump truck designed to transport large loads over rough terrain and sometimes even on public roads. Articulated haulers are used for mining, quarrying, tunneling and even more versatile jobs. The articulated hauler considered for this study was Volvo’s A30 as seen in Figure 2. The application chosen for the life cycle energy analysis in this project was the bogie beam of this articulated hauler, also shown in figure 2.

Figure 2. Volvo articulated hauler A30 and bogie beam structure.

Two bogie beam designs were considered for the life-cycle energy analysis for comparison; A30 Original design and the A30 Optimized design. The plate thicknesses and the masses of the designs can be seen in Table 1. A weight reduction of 34% was achieved in the optimized version due to the change in design and the reduction in plate