Multidisciplinary design optimization incorporating aircraft emission impacts

Continuous increase in air traffic has caused a rise in public awareness of environmental impact of aircrafts, imposing the demand to satisfy the emission requirements for future aircraft concept design and development. In this paper, the average temperature variation is calculated to measure the environmental performance of different aircraft designs. It is firstly used to analyze the effects of cruise altitude and speed variation on the magnitudes of climate impact due to different aircraft emissions, and is then integrated into an aircraft design optimization framework at the conceptual stage, so as to optimize the minimum emission impacts and operating costs. The design variables considered in the optimization problems include aircraft configurations, engine parameters and cruise settings. Additionally, the impact of emission cost on the tradeoffs between economic and environmental performance are reflected on the Pareto-optimal front.