A Robust Sustainability Assessment Methodology for Aircraft Parts: Application to a Fuselage Panel

TL;DR

This paper introduces a comprehensive, robust sustainability assessment methodology for aircraft parts, integrating multi-criteria decision-making and life cycle analyses, demonstrated through evaluating fuselage panel variants.

Contribution

It develops a systematic sustainability assessment framework combining MCDM, LCA, and LCC, adaptable to various aircraft components for improved decision-making.

Findings

Thermoplastic CFRP panels are identified as the most sustainable option.

The methodology consistently ranks options across different MCDM techniques.

The approach is adaptable to any aircraft component with available data.

Abstract

The paper presents a cradle-to-gate sustainability assessment methodology specifically designed to evaluate aircraft components in a robust and systematic manner. This methodology integrates multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) analysis across ten criteria, categorized under environmental impact, cost, and performance. Environmental impact is analyzed through life cycle assessment and cost through life cycle costing, with both analyses facilitated by SimaPro software. Performance is measured in terms of component mass and specific stiffness. The robustness of this methodology is tested through various MCDM techniques, normalization approaches, and objective weighting methods. To demonstrate the methodology, the paper assesses the sustainability of a fuselage panel, comparing nine variants that differ in materials, joining techniques, and part thicknesses. All approaches consistently identify thermoplastic CFRP panels as the most sustainable option, with the geometric mean aggregation of weights providing balanced criteria consideration across environmental, cost, and performance aspects. The adaptability of this proposed methodology is illustrated, showing its applicability to any aircraft component with the requisite data. This structured approach offers critical insights to support sustainable decision-making in aircraft component design and procurement.