Life Cycle Assessments of components can help make aircraft
production more sustainable. The decisive factor is making the data available
at an early stage. Thanks to a new eco design software, these data are now
available even at the design stage.
The European aviation industry has set ambitious
environmental protection goals for itself: by the year 2020, it not only wants
to reduce emissions of gases harmful to the climate – carbon dioxide by 50
percent and nitrogen oxide by 80 percent – but it also wants to improve the
life cycles of the aircrafts themselves. “Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)” is the
term experts use to describe the systematic assessment of the adverse
environmental impact of aircraft components in use. The analysis comprises all
of the environmental impact that a product has caused throughout the course of
its entire life cycle – from production to use to recycling or disposal.