Economic and Environmental Sustainability for Aircrafts Service Life

Marcello Fera, Raffaele Abbate, Mario Caterino, Pasquale Manco, Roberto Macchiaroli and Marta Rinaldi
Additional contact information
Marcello Fera: Department of Engineering, University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, 81031 Aversa, Italy
Raffaele Abbate: Department of Engineering, University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, 81031 Aversa, Italy
Mario Caterino: Department of Engineering, University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, 81031 Aversa, Italy
Pasquale Manco: Department of Engineering, University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, 81031 Aversa, Italy
Roberto Macchiaroli: Department of Engineering, University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, 81031 Aversa, Italy
Marta Rinaldi: Department of Engineering, University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, 81031 Aversa, Italy

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 23, 1-17

Abstract: Aircrafts are responsible for a significant environmental impact mainly due to the air pollution caused by their motors. The use of composite materials for their production is a way to significantly reduce the weight of the structures and to maximise the ratio between the payload weight and the gasoline consumption. Moreover, the design phase has to consider the cost of different operations performed during the aircraft service life. During the entire life cycle, one of the main costs is the maintenance one. In the current literature, there is a lack of knowledge of methods for maintenance cost estimation in the aircraft industry; moreover, very few environmental assessment methods have been developed. Thus, the aim of this paper is to define a new method to support the aircraft design process; both the environmental and the economic dimensions have been included with the purpose of assessing the aircraft sustainability during its service life. A green index has been identified mixing the maintenance cost and an environmental parameter with the aim of identifying the greenest solution. A final practical application shows the feasibility and the simple application of the proposed approach.

Keywords: aircraft industry; aircraft sustainability; green design; maintenance cost (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/23/10120/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/23/10120/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:23:p:10120-:d:456047

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().