A Modular Framework for Life Cycle Assessment of Aircraft Maintenance

Abstract

Facing the increasing environmental awareness and the growing pressure on aviation, life cycle assessment is becoming an essential prerequisite to quantify the ecological impact of aircraft. However, such evaluations are typically confined the manufacturing, flying, and occasionally disposing processes, while maintenance activities are often neglected or simplified. This paper presents a process-based approach that is able to ecologically assess different maintenance operations using a normalized inventory. The developed approach divides aircraft maintenance into different segments and then evaluates them individually. By using a modular and discrete-event driven framework, which can model the entire life cycle of an aircraft, the economic and, above all, ecological consequences of maintenance activities are then considered and analyzed. The process based life cycle assessment approach is applied using the example of a jet engine wash and, with the help of a parameter study, conclusions are then drawn regarding the ecological impact of this maintenance task. The results show that taking environmental aspects into account can positively affect the decision-making process of otherwise economically driven airlines. In the case of the engine wash, for example, this means that even a small economic investment can lead to significant ecological benefits.