Life cycle assessment models for overall aircraft design

The transportation sector, and more particularly the aviation sector, is regularly pointed at and considered as a significant contributor to today's climate change because of its greenhouse gas emissions growth. As global awareness and concerns about the aviation environmental impacts are growing, a need to quantify them has arisen especially when considering alternative energy sources. Many methods exist to provide some models and key figures. Among them, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) allows studying the stages of a product life cycle and quantifying their impacts on several environmental indicators. In this paper, an LCA of aircraft similar to an Airbus A320 is developed and computed for identifying the most impacting stages of its life. The results obtained are used to develop and implement an environmental module in FAST-OAD, an overall aircraft design tool composed of several typical modules (aerodynamics, propulsion, structure, etc.). Finally, an application of the method is achieved for an aircraft that uses different incorporation rates of biofuels. Results show that the biofuels of second generation (used cooking oil) can reduce CO2 effects almost by half if mixed with 50 % of kerosene, or by 90 % if completely incorporated. Furthermore, one last study is achieved regarding an aircraft designed for a specific range of 2500 NM for two different operational missions of 2750 NM and 500 NM. Results show that the shorter range deteriorates its performances in terms of CO2 effects per RPK by 18% when compared to the 2750 NM range.