This research area focuses on the development of methodologies and tools to anticipate life-cycle assessments since the beginning of the design process. These life-cycle analyses shall assess the sustainability of the under-investigated alternatives from two major standpoints: the economic and technological feasibility, and the environmental sustainability. This originates the following research topics:
- Life-cycle cost estimation and technology roadmaps for sustainable high-speed aviation, reusable access to space systems and space transportation systems
The mastering of technologies to enable future high-speed air and space transportation systems is a worldwide challenge: to compete in such an innovative and dynamic context, technology roadmapping methodologies coupled with life-cycle cost estimation methodologies and tools are key players in establishing priorities in technology development. In this context, this research activity aims at developing integrated methodology and tools to complement the conceptual design phase with economic and technological assessments of the under-investigation systems and missions in a life-cycle perspective. As far as the economic sustainability is concerned, special focus shall be devoted to the development of parametric formulations enabling the prediction of development, production and operational costs, with insights on the propellant life-cycle. The possibility of including the technology readiness level as a driver of the parametric formulations will ensure a direct link with the technology roadmap. Complementary, to assess the technological sustainability of the project, the traditional technology readiness assessment shall be coupled with multi-criteria prioritization techniques to define feasible development plans.
The developed methodologies shall be duly customized depending on the specific family of investigated systems, which include high-speed civil aircraft, reusable access to space systems and space transportation systems.
This research activity is carried out in the framework of international cooperation with the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and the European Space Agency (ESA) and Thales Alenia Space.
- Life-cycle emissions estimation for sustainable high-speed aviation, reusable access to space systems and space transportation systems
This research activity aims at developing methodologies and tools to enable the prediction the environmental footprint of the systems under-investigation with a life-cycle perspective. To carry out this analysis at conceptual design phase, the methodology shall include novel analytical formulations for the prediction of pollutant and greenhouse gases chemical emissions as well as of nuisance emissions (jet-noise and sonic boom). These formulations shall be validated against high fidelity simulations and experimental data. This is possible thanks to the international cooperation with the Italian Aerospace Research Centre (CIRA) and the international collaborative projects funded by the European Commission such as the H2020 MORE&LESS Project (https://doi.org/10.3030/101006856)
People: Nicole Viola and Roberta Fusaro