Aircraft Life Cycle Assessment

Dear Colleagues,

Given the growing environmental awareness of society and politics and the resulting pressure on aviation as one of the significant contributors to greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts, ecological impact assessments are becoming increasingly important as the first step towards sustainable engineering. The primary motivation for conducting such environmental assessments is to determine the environmental impact of aircraft throughout the life cycle phases of manufacturing, operation, maintenance, repair and overhaul, and end-of-life.

Understanding these impacts is essential for all stakeholders in the aviation system for making sound decisions about the design, operation, and disposal of aircraft as well as operational and technological measures that will reduce the environmental footprint in the most effective way and thus ultimately help to create more sustainable aviation systems.

However, the environmental impact of aircraft is a complex and multi-disciplinary issue that requires a holistic approach and an integrated view. Key issues related to the environmental performance of aircraft include sustainable design and manufacturing practices, strategies to reduce fuel consumption and emissions, waste reduction and recycling, and sustainable end-of-life disposal practices. This Special Issue provides an opportunity for researchers to publish their findings on a wide range of topics arising from their research on aviation's environmental footprint and measures to reduce its impact. Within the area of production, this includes the energy and resource consumption required for the extraction and processing of raw materials or the generation of waste and emissions from the manufacturing process. Research in the area of the operational phase may include aspects such as fuel efficiency of the aircraft, in-flight emissions or the type and quality of fuel used. Studies in the field of MRO can address energy consumption and waste generation during the maintenance process, material demand or the impact of transportation of parts and components. Key considerations for the end-of-life phase may focus on the energy and resources required to dismantle and recycle the aircraft, the disposal of hazardous materials and waste generated during the dismantling process.

In addition to the consideration of measures in the individual life cycle phases as well as their cross-phase influence, papers are also welcome that present methodological approaches that go beyond the application of standard evaluation approaches. This concerns, for example, the enhancement of the quality and availability of aviation-specific data sets, the expansion of impact categories to include aviation-specific aspects such as noise, the consideration of circular economy aspects or co-design approaches.

The aim of this Special Issue is to focus on recent developments on LCA of aerospace structures by gathering contributions from various subfields, including (but not limited to):

• Environmental impact assessment;
• Ecological footprint;
• Sustainability;
• Eco-design principles;
• Life cycle assessment databases;
• Life cycle-based decision-making;
• Life cycle management;
• Life cycle optimization;
• Baseline and novel LCA standards and methods;
• Social life cycle analysis;
• Sustainable driven aircraft design;
• Planetary boundaries;
• Aircraft manufacturing;
• Material selection;
• Alternative energy carriers;
• Emissions;
• Maintenance, repair and overhaul;
• End-of-Life;
• Material reuse and recycling (experiments and process simulation);
• Resource depletion;
• Environmental labeling;
• Circular economy principles;
• Circular business models;
• Digital tools for circularity assessment and enhancement.

Dr. Kai Wicke
Dr. Konstantinos Tserpes
Guest Editors

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