Development of a Generic Fleet-Level Noise Methodology

Abstract

Future air transportation demand forecasts suggest that environmental concerns such as noise will be exacerbated beyond their current level. Although detailed airport noise modeling is available with the current fleet, a rapid, flexible, and more generic method is desired to evaluate fleet-level metrics with respect to new technologies or forecasted changes in demand. Although some work has been done to this extent, only the area of the 65 dB contour has been considered as the relevant metric. These methods cannot account for the shape of the contour, which has far-reaching implications for the ultimate metric: population affected. Moreover, the 65 dB contour as the lone contour of interest is a paradigm that, recently, has begun shifting to include other contour levels. This paper presents a generic fleet-level noise methodology that leverages the fidelity of detailed modeling software. By performing generic aircraft operations up front, these events can be rapidly recombined later to perform trades of various noise mitigation strategies. By moving the detailed noise modeling ‘off-line’ and making the appropriate assumptions, some of the fidelity of these models can be propagated earlier into the decision-making process. The methodology was used to demonstrate two simple proofs of concept that evaluate the method by accuracy and process criteria. Finally, discussions for validation of assumptions and future work to improve accuracy are included.