Sustainability assessment of aircraft using multi-criteria decision support MCDS methods
Loading...
Date
2024-10-17
Authors
Θεοδοσίου, Πέτρος
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
In today’s world, where global climate change is an undeniable reality, humanity has set mandatory restrictions, regarding the aviation industry, with sustainability taking a critical role in aircraft design in order to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. This thesis incorporates multicriteria decision support (MCDS) to assess sustainability in commercial aircraft. Main considerations of the problem occur in the performance, environmental impact, cost, circularity and social criteria that an airplane can be evaluated. This research starts with a brief review of the history of aviation focusing on the recent needs and benefits of applying sustainable technologies. The study develops an aircraft dataset consisting of eight models, including five short-medium range and three long-range, with two conceptual models featuring hydrogen-powered population. The MCDM methods that were selected form a hybrid model featuring the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) for deriving the weights of the main and sub criteria and then for the aggregation and computational process of the sustainability index are utilized Weighted Sum Model (WSM) and the Technical for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). The implementation of the model is done in MATLAB and reveals significant results, highlighting the variability in aircraft sustainability assessment regarding the criteria that were prioritized. Overall, the data analysis indicates that hydrogen-powered aircraft and more environmentally friendly technologies have promising results with some of them already applied while others not yet being practical for commercial use. Furthermore, the thesis includes a graphical user interface (GUI), aiming to visualize the aircraft assessment, providing access to a broad range of users that are interested in the topic. The platform is modular and developed in a matter where the decision maker can select what method and how much consideration to give to each field, featuring place for future improvements and expansions to this or relevant other areas. Further steps for future investigations include expanding the Dataset of the aircraft models, improvements regarding the MCDM tool with additional methods and subsequent development of the GUI application.
Description
Keywords
Sustainability, Sustainable aviation, Aircraft selection, Sustainable assessment index, Conceptual aircraft design, MCDM methods