How to apply mitigating actions against critical raw materials issues in mechanical design

Circular economy, sustainability and design for environment are some of the keywords that identify new formidable challenges to be faced in the next years. Raw materials have a dominant role in reaching that goal. Green energy, electric vehicles, communication, etc. depends on raw materials labeled as critical because of their economic importance coupled with high supply risk. For this reason, mitigating actions need to be used in materials selection and design such as material substitution, materials efficiency improvement and recycling. In this work, a method to implement raw materials criticality issues in materials selection for mechanical design is described according to the recent literature. The strategy is based on Ashby's approach and the definition of the alloy criticality index quantifying the criticality per unit of mass of the material.