A Modular Life Cycle Assessment Framework for Novel Aircraft Configurations and Sustainable Aviation Fuels
Kristina MAZUR, Katrin BISTRECK, Christina ERBSKORN, Mirko HORNUNG
Abstract. This work presents a modular framework for environmental impact assessment in conceptual aircraft design, developed within the UNICADO environment. The new architecture decouples individual life cycle phases and has been extended to various Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) pathways. This enhanced flexibility enables a more robust and holistic trade-off analysis of an aircraft’s environmental footprint early in the design process. The case study of UNICADO-LR-01 presents results on cumulative energy demand shares for each life cycle activity. Additional results reveal that the life cycle phases operations (62.0, 78.4, 84.6%) and energy carrier production (29.6, 14.3, 9.9%) are most dominant in terms of energy, CO2, and NOx, respectively. Results from SAF pathways suggest a shift towards the energy carrier production phase.
Keywords
Life Cycle Assessment, Sustainable Aviation Fuel, Aircraft Design
Published online 7/20/2026, 6 pages
Copyright © 2026 by the author(s)
Published under license by Materials Research Forum LLC., Millersville PA, USA
Citation: Kristina MAZUR, Katrin BISTRECK, Christina ERBSKORN, Mirko HORNUNG, A Modular Life Cycle Assessment Framework for Novel Aircraft Configurations and Sustainable Aviation Fuels, Materials Research Proceedings, Vol. 69, pp 487-492, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21741/9781644904251-88
The article was published as article 88 of the book CEAS – AIDAA Conference 2025
Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
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