Lifecycle Evaluation of Concept Aircraft for Sustainable Aviation

The continuously growing demand for air transport is faced with society's increasingly urgent need to significantly reduce the environmental impact of air traffic and bring its climate impact in line with the Paris climate targets, as well as air quality and noise emissions in line with local requirements. Existing flight restrictions and charges act as effective tools to reduce the burden on society, but at the same time form a constraint on economic development. Thus, there is a need for new aircraft configurations that combine societal needs with business interests and affordability for customers through significantly reduced emissions and noise in commercially successful operations. Electric or hybrid-electric propulsion systems have the potential to enable aircraft configurations that harmonize these requirements. The DLR-internal project EXACT (Exploration of Electric Aircraft Concepts and Technologies) is dedicated to these challenges and strives an overall system concept for a climate-neutral short-to-medium haul aircraft with an entry into service (EIS) in 2040 which provide an economically reasonable operation with significantly reduced climate impact. This requires on the one hand an exploration of different aircraft architectures (vehicles, system architectures and technologies) and on the other hand a corresponding assessment that allows a statement about the impact of these aircraft concepts on the overall system level, for different stakeholders and finally on the eco-efficiency. This includes that the focus is not only on primary implications of such aircraft but also on secondary effects down the river. Based on these requirements, it is necessary to move away from a classical evaluation on vehicle level, for instance evaluation on only a single mission, and rather establish a corresponding evaluation that analyses the aircraft in its operating environment and reflects the interactions with it. This includes, for example, consideration of the life phases of production and end-of-life, operation in an airline network with route distributions, the development of energy prices, the development of regulations or considering the passenger acceptance of such aircraft. In order to be able to carry out a holistic lifecycle assessment of such new type of aircraft with a high level of system integration, various competencies of different DLR institutes are bundled.