Aircraft Eco-assembly: a strategy to reduce the ecological footprint of aerospace industry
Abstract
The aerospace industry is a vector and a destructive agent for the environment. It is observed several pollutants and harmful wastes in all aeronautical activities. Given the negative impacts of the aerospace industry on the environment, large organizations such as Airbus, Boeing, Bombadier and Embraer have taken awareness of the urgency to inhibit environmental footprint. It has become imperative to design flying machines that could be less harmful for the environment. Therefore, aerospace industry has undertaken initiatives to limit its environmental footprint for two main phases of the aircraft lifecycle, named utilisation and final disposal. For utilisation, eco-design was used to reduce energy dependency and reduce pollution rate. For final disposal, eco-design enables aircraft recycling or final disposal under legal and industry norms. However, our literature review highlights the gap for projects to reduce environmental footprint during aircraft assembly. This paper identifies the main sources of pollution during the aircraft assembly phase and evaluates the possible strategies or initiatives to be undertaken to reduce waste quantity and to ensure their management. These strategies are named in this paper as eco-assembly.