Flight Load Assessment for Light Aircraft Landing Trajectories in Windy Atmosphere and Near Wind Farms

Carmine Varriale,Jonas Schmidt,Bernhard Stoevesandt,Elia Daniele,Agostino De Marco

doi:10.3390/aerospace5020042

Carmine Varriale, Jonas Schmidt + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace5020042

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Abstract

This work focuses on the wake encounter problem occurring when a light, or very light, aircraft flies through or nearby a wind turbine wake. The dependency of the aircraft normal load factor on the distance from the turbine rotor in various flight and environmental conditions is quantified. For this research, a framework of software applications has been developed for generating and controlling a population of flight simulation scenarios in presence of assigned wind and turbulence fields. The JSBSim flight dynamics model makes use of several autopilot systems for simulating a realistic pilot behavior during navigation. The wind distribution, calculated with OpenFOAM, is a separate input for the dynamic model and is considered frozen during each flight simulation. The aircraft normal load factor during wake encounters is monitored at different distances from the rotor, aircraft speeds, rates of descent and crossing angles. Based on these figures, some preliminary guidelines and recommendations on safe encounter distances are provided for general aviation aircraft, with considerations on pilot comfort and flight safety. These are needed, for instance, when an accident risk assessment study is required for flight in proximity of aeolic parks. A link to the GitHub code repository is provided.

Highlights

The specific situation we have investigated in this work is represented by general aviation users operating near unlicensed aerodromes, focusing the attention on light and ultra-light fixed-wing aircraft
This paper addresses the problem of controllability of a light aircraft during a wake encounter flight by prescribing a trajectory for a simple autopilot system to follow
The purpose is a simulation-based quantification of the flight parameters involved in a wind turbine wake encounter by very-light aircraft

Summary

Introduction

As a consequence of the spread of wind farms operation sites, it is easy to understand how, to this day, the most accessible locations have already been used up: these are the ones located at sufficient distance from communities, with no environmental or aeronautical constraints, and with good access to the grid network. Attention has recently turned to the more challenging sites and more and more issues have started to arise for the aviation sector. During 2015 in Germany, about 4100 MW of planned wind turbine projects were stopped for incompatibility with existing aviation and radar facilities [2]. The specific situation we have investigated in this work is represented by general aviation users operating near unlicensed aerodromes, focusing the attention on light and ultra-light fixed-wing aircraft

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