This thesis project was conducted to compare the environmental impacts between two types of material for a superstructure of cruising ship (Norwegian Gem) using life cycle assessment (LCA) methods. With the increasing price of industrial raw materials and finite resources, more and more corporations or manufacturers endeavor in seeking more economical materials and less environmental impacts within the ship building field. In recent years, lightweight composite material has been applied in various industrial fields, for instance, green buildings, aircraft and wind turbine blade. In order to study impacts of steel superstructure and composite material superstructure of the ship, a detail study was conducted which using the comparative LCA method and SimaPro software. Two different superstructures are compared, steel superstructure and sandwich material superstructure. The results showed thatover the life cycle the environmental impacts of sandwich superstructure type are much less than for the steel superstructure. The main contribution of impacts over the life time is operation phase due to fuel consumption. When increasing the waste recycling section for composite structure, the influence on environment has an obvious decrease compared to steel superstructure.

This thesis was conducted to investigate the impacts of fiber composites on theenvironment. Composition, properties and application of fiber compositeswere also studied. On the basis of its application, taking into account previousstudies information was gathered related to impacts of these fiber composites.In order to study impacts of fiber composites in marine application a detailstudy was conducted where using the LCA method and Sima Pro softwarethree ship superstructures of the ship Stena Hollandica were compared. Thesewere steel superstructure, balsawood core superstructure and PVC foamsuperstructure. The results showed that over the lifecycle the impacts of PVCand balsawood superstructure were almost the same and were better than thesteel superstructure. The main contribution of impacts over the lifetime wasdue to the fuel consumed. When only the superstructure was consideredseparately from the life cycle the best choice was balsawood and the PVC foamsuperstructure had the most impacts. Overall it was found that balsawoodcould be considered as the best alternative as a material for the construction ofthis ship superstructure.