Multidisciplinary conceptual design of eco-friendly commercial aircraft: performance and profitability

Abstract

This work deals with the conceptual design of environment–friendly airplanes with a focus on both economic, technical and environmental considerations. The ultimate goal of the research is the assessment of the long–term financial implications induced by the highly–innovative, unconventional concepts expected to be introduced in the near future to cope with the environment challenge. Specifically, the present work aims at the identification of a design strategy suitable to ensure the sustainable development of the civil aviation avoiding unaffordable financial penalization for the stakeholders involved. The main novelty is the analysis of social cost noise fees effectiveness combined with the extension of the economic models embracing a wider group of stakeholders’ interests. The environment challenge and the expected growth of both the market demand and urban areas nearby airport facilities impose a technology breakthrough within the aeronautical industry. Although several innovative configurations of airplanes have been analyzed, none of them has been yet chosen as the most promising candidate and one of the reasons is related to the not yet known economic impacts of these architectures. Negative externalities related to air traffic emissions play a more critical role and their translation into a fair economic value is needed to move forward along a sustainable development. The analysis has been performed within a comprehensive multi–disciplinary framework, adopting all the technical constraints required in aeronautical design. The problem has been explored from a single–airplane approach considering the impact of density, capacity utilization, scope and scale economies and formalized through a multi–objective optimization approach. Furthermore, most of the innovative solutions under analysis present unconventional characteristics, which involve in the long–run a high level of technical and financial uncertainties, whose quantification and management are key enabling factors for a realistic estimate of new solutions commercial attractiveness.The comparisons of the Pareto fronts obtained through performance, accounting and financial simulations, show that the model proposed yields highly–efficient, technically sound concepts and they also highlight the need for appropriate noise fees as an instrument to push all the stakeholders towards a radical renewal of the technologies. They therefore encourage the aeronautical industry towards a clear shared strategy in the development of the next generation of innovative eco–friendly configurations.