International Scientific Journals
of Scientific Technical Union of Mechanical Engineering "Industry 4.0"

Sustainability is topic of great concern since the last decade and still today does not lose of its popularity. Reason for that is that the contemporary way of living is causing great damages to the environment. Designers have been talking about changing the ways in which the products are designed in order to have sustainable product. But, for achieving sustainability many aspects need to be addressed, such as: cultural, social, economical and technological. Nowadays, we believe that these aspects are on higher level and we can talk about sustainable design.
Every product development process starts with the design phase and this is why we believe that it is most important for making improvements of the products. In this paper we have the premise that good and appropriate design can have positive influence on the sustainability. In order to check the validity of the premise we are reviewing paper dealing with sustainability, eco design, and engineering materials.

As global environmental impacts have increased, modern societies have expressed a strong interest in implementing sustainable solutions to reduce emissions and use operational energy and natural resources. The construction industry is a leading promoter of significant environmental impacts because it consumes a significant amount of water, energy, and materials. Steel and welding are critical in all three major sectors of the industry: construction, infrastructure, and industry. This paper discusses the significance of meeting sustainable development goals in welded structures and identifies ways that this industry can help to reduce environmental impact and improve employment conditions while achieving economic growth, saving time, and maintaining structural quality. The paper discusses how to optimize various aspects ranging from raw material extraction to construction waste disposal using the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. It provides a starting point and demonstrates how these tools can contribute to more sustainable welded structures.

Direct At the Technical University of Liberec, Faculty of Textiles, there was a cooperation between this state university and a small private company. The cooperation was created for the development of sustainable aids for menstrual periods. All development took place at the university, including the search for local production partners, and the private company financed the development. The output is a utility model owned by the university and the private company, and in addition the private company pays the license fee. Th e article describes in more detail this cooperation, as well as the development and the developed product, up to its actual commercialization.

The paradigm of Industry 4.0 pushes additive manufacturing (AM) from rapid prototyping towards the position of series production. Especially in metal 3D printing, increased attention is being paid to the topics of sustainability and resource efficiency. Energy demand during production and the calculation of building times play a decisive role here. Science has developed models for calculating energy consumption based on analytical and empirical approaches. Building time calculators have been introduced using a wide variety of analytical, analogical and parametric approaches. The present review summarizes the results and the state of the art, illustrates the results graphically and thus paves the way for further research approaches. The specific energy consumption per kilogram of processed material has risen over the last decades, which can be explained by higher technical requirements for production machines. Building time calculations continue to be subject to errors, depending on the type of calculation. The introduction of machine learning approaches has the potential to reduce this discrepancy.

Mankind faces a number of challenges in the 21st century. Many of them are related to the achievement of the goals and ideas set in the concept of sustainable development of modern UN society. The bio-sector, which is developing within the borders of the Bulgarian economy, has undergone rapid development in the last few years. Many factors have influenced this process, the most sign ificant of which are: increased demand for organic products in international markets, high levels of public support for this type of production and the availability of favorable climatic conditions for their development. Innovation is the main tool for achieving competitiveness and economic growth at all levels – enterprise, industry, region or country. They are the fundamental means of improving people’s quality of life. The purpose of this report is to present the results of a survey conducted among bio-enterprises in the regions of Bulgaria and to show that the green innovation in the bio-sectors is the foundation for regional economic, social and environmental prosperity. The results of the study summarize the main directions for achieving regionally balanced sustainable development.

Cities today are highly endangered by the global urbanization trends and the sustainability issues that they may bring. With the increasing environmental awareness and the development of technology, there is an urgent need to rethink how we plan and manage our cities. With the advancements in technology, we are entering the era of smart cities where information and communication technologies are used to collect large amount of data to transform city economies, social cohesion and city governance. This paper explains the concept of the smart city and its characteristics which can be used to solve the sustainability problems that the city may face. Following the introduction, the paper continues by presenting six main characteristics of smart cities and their role in sustainability. The chapter then proceeds to a description of a smart sustainable city model that derives from merging three main city models related to sustainability and smartness, namely the eco-city, compact city and data driven city. Finally, the application of smart city technologies that are being used to achieve sustainability in some randomly chosen cities is presented and discussed.

Cyber-physical systems are structures that are controlled and monitored by computer-based algorithms consisting of physical components. The energy industry is becoming a large and complex cyber physical system with the industrial revolution. These developments in the energy sector have a positive effect on Industry 4.0. Developments in the fields of production, transmission and distribution, retail sales, trade and consumption from the elements of the energy sector are increasing day by day via sensor-based communicable autonomous systems. U.N. Industrial Revolution in its report in 2017 elaborate the relevancy between the Sustainable Development Goals no. 7 and 9 about sustainable energy and inclusive industry development that Industry 4.0 and sustainable energy transition share crucial concerns that can be interconnected to pursue a sustainable energy transition. Sustainable energy is defined to have two main components: energy efficiency and renewable energy. UNIDO’s initial hypothesis tells that a comprehensive shift in manufacturing may change the behavior in energy consumption, including energy efficiency and renewable energy usage. Circulating fluidized bed (CFB) technology is one of the important factors contributing to the above mentioned concept of sustainable energy.

Transport has irrepressible contribution for the effective development of economy and society. But, these contributions are exceeded by harmful environmental consequences that transport growth causes especially in urban areas. Air pollution, acid rain, noise, climate change are just few of the problems which every urban area is dealing with. Hence, it is very important to provide development of the transport that at the same time could increase its sustainability and minimize environmental degradation. Numerous sustainable transport solutions are available with a potential to decrease these negative influences and promote mobility with higher sustainability. This paper presents a review of sustainable solutions, successfully applied in practice, as guidance for those urban areas that are dealing with the environmental problems from transport, but still are a step behind in undertaking activities.

Sustainable transport, as one of the areas on which sustainable development should be founded, depends more and more on introduction of electric vehicles in daily traffic. This paper describes part of the results of wider research related to the analysis of all sustainable transport indicators. Since introduction of electric vehicles is supposed to be done stage by stage in the actual transport, deep understanding of its main parameters/indicators is a prerequisite for reliable analysis. The paper identifies traffic and vehicle structure parameters and rang them in hierarchic order. This structure can serve as substructure in more complex structure of all transport parameters in wider researches.

The subject of the study is a motocultivator whose construction is designed for soil cultivation on small-scale private farms. Magnitudes – variables and constants that characterize the statics and dynamics of the motocultivator are identified. The motion equations are derived based on the corresponding body simplifications that move in the vertical-longitudinal plane with two degrees of freedom. The computerized simulation model of the dynamic system was developed using the Vemsim software. The numerical solution has been obtained. After analysis the relevant conclusions are made to improve the sustainability of the motocultivator movement within the required controllability.

In the recent years both academics and practitioners have paid attention to environmental issues. With increasing complexity and diversity of implemented environmental practices they try to find the successful model of environmental management and sustainable development. Although a large number of environmental management models have been developed, there is no good solution because the models are different in their „nature”. Many of them are evolutionary (stage, phase models) models that described a development in time consisting of an increasing integration of environmental concern into business policy and strategy. Others are typology models that characterizes companies’ positions, without assuming such a growing responsiveness. The aim of the article is to present the characteristics of sustainable and the corporate environmental management models.

Growing problems of transportation in urban areas in terms of congestion, air pollution, reduced safety and comfort, occupation of the space, are creating the need for innovative mobility strategies and exchanging good practices. One of the measures that can help resolving these issues is urban carpooling that decreases the number of private cars traveling to/from a desired destination site.
This paper focuses on good practice examples of carpooling in Europe and potentials for transferring knowledge and experience. Several implemented concepts of carpooling are discussed in terms of resources and implementation effects. The paper concludes with recommendations for stepwise implementation of carpooling concept.