Advancing Eco-Design in Aviation: Strategies, Challenges and Pathways to Sustainability

Linked Sessions:

Poster Number:  25 

Main Presenter:    Alka Kumari 

Co-Authors:   Nathalie Rondeau     Amandine Spinosa                                          

Eco-design in aviation has emerged as a critical approach in addressing the environmental impacts of air transportation. The aviation industry has been exploring and acting on various sustainable levelers to reduce environmental impacts which includes design efficiency on materials, energy, noise etc., as well as on design for recycling and end-of-life treatment, using a full product life cycle thinking approach.
In addition to that the high attention paid to the climate change impact mainly coming from the operation phase of the aircraft, other key aspects are carefully considered and encompassed end-of-life treatment, circularity and the criticality of raw materials.
This study emphasizes the critical importance of end-of-life treatment2 (dismantling and recycling) of retired aircrafts, as it is expected that 20,000+ aircrafts to be retired in the next 20 years, which highlights the need to organize and mandate the end-of-life treatment aspect in the aviation industry. There is also a projection that the global aircraft fleet will almost double over the next 20 years, which leads to an increase in consumption of primary raw material3, leading towards embracing circular approach and waste reduction. Details on the methodology for assessing the criticality of raw materials (CRM)4 based on the supply risk, environmental and ethical impact.
Furthermore the study explores the methodology to perform various environmental assessments from design phase to the serial production, which includes simplified environmental assessment (SEA), semi-quantitative environmental assessments (SQEA) and detailed life cycle assessments, each methodology offers unique insights into the environmental impacts and emphasizes the critical importance of these eco-design aspects, consideration to be in conformance with European commission’s green initiative / rules / guidelines.

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