Aircraft fleet models using a bottom-up approach for simulating aviation technological prospective scenarios

International audienceModeling prospective scenarios for aviation in the context of climate issues is a scientific topic of major interest. For this purpose, the development of models to integrate technological improvements in these scenarios is necessary. This paper focuses on the use of a bottom-up approach to establish aircraft fleet models, in order to integrate them into CAST, an open-source tool for simulating and evaluating prospective scenarios for air transport. These models are based on logistic functions which allow representing the gradual replacement of current aircraft by future aircraft architectures obtained from overall aircraft design. The efficiency improvement of the aircraft fleet can then be assessed. To illustrate the use of the models, some case studies, considering for example turboprop and hydrogen aircraft, are performed for analyzing efficiency scenarios for air transport. Also, the effect of accelerated fleet renewal and earlier introduction of new aircraft architectures is studied