Effetto delle nuove tecnologie sul costo del velivolo = EFFECTS OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES ON THE AIRPLANE FINAL COST

Because of the recent economic crisis, both the regulations to lower down emissions and fuel prices have remarkably increased. For this reason, the main goal of many aircraft companies is to make an airplane project cost efficient. In other words, the Life-Cycle-Cost (LCC) of it needs to be analyzed. In particular, considerations concerning cost savings are especially important during the preliminary design phase, for it is during this phase that fundamental decisions are taken. The main purpose of this thesis is to deeply describe a cost estimation method: the Roskam method. As a matter of fact, this method takes into account 4 different cost categories: the RDTE phase, the Manufacturing & Acquisition phase, the Operating phase and the Disposal phase. Each of them depends on many factors which are linked to the aircraft performances themselves. Once computed the costs of these categories, the LCC cost is found just by summing the costs of these 4 cost phases. Then, some technologies that can be of interest in the aviation industry in the near future (concerning the airframe, the engine, alternative fuels and wing) are presented. After that, a detailed description of 9 new technologies which are currently available on modern commercial aircrafts or still under development is done. For each of them an estimation of cost savings per each category has been done. Finally, in the last part of this thesis, two small to medium range commercial aircrafts have been studied. In particular, an ATR-72 500 and an Airbus A-320 200 have been taken into account. The Roskam cost estimation model has been applied on each of them, showing their RDTE cost, Acquisition & Manufacturing cost, the Operating cost, the Disposal one and finally, the entire LCC. After that, it has been calculated the benefits each of the 9 new technologies brought to the aircraft in terms of cost categories savings. At the end of this chapter, a consideration about the extra benefits a combination of 2 new technologies could bring has been done, showing the results in terms of money saved per each combination.