Abstract
Air traffic simulations serve as common practice to evaluate different concepts and methods for air transportation studies. The aircraft performance model is a key element that supports these simulation-based studies. It is also an important component for simulation-independent studies, such as air traffic optimization and prediction studies. Commonly, contemporary studies have to rely on proprietary aircraft performance models that restrict the redistribution of the data and code. To promote openness and research comparability, an alternative open performance model would be beneficial for the air transportation research community. In this paper, we introduce an open aircraft performance model (OpenAP). It is an open-source model that is based on a number of our previous studies, which were focused on different components of the aircraft performance. The unique characteristic of OpenAP is that it was built upon open aircraft surveillance data and open literature models. The model is composed of four main components, including aircraft and engine properties, kinematic performances, dynamic performances, and utility libraries. Alongside the performance model, we are publishing an open-source toolkit to facilitate the use of this model. The main objective of this paper is to describe each main component, their connections, and how they can be used for simulation and research in practice. Finally, we analyzed the performance of OpenAP by comparing it with an existing performance model and sample flight data.
Highlights
Many current air traffic management studies are aimed at solving the challenges caused by the increasing demand for air transportation
We present an open aircraft performance model, OpenAP, which can be used as an alternative to Base of Aircraft Data (BADA) for future air traffic management studies
The results presented in this paper largely benefit from the recently expanded adoption of automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) and Enhanced Mode-S (EHS) technologies
Summary
Many current air traffic management studies are aimed at solving the challenges caused by the increasing demand for air transportation. We present an open aircraft performance model, OpenAP, which can be used as an alternative to BADA for future air traffic management studies. It is a model produced by the combination of open data, literature models, and estimated parameters originating from open data. One of the data-driven components in OpenAP is the aircraft kinematic performance model, which is a result of our earlier study [14,15]. The aircraft thrust and fuel flow are two examples In these cases, we must address the modeling challenge based on engine performance instead of flight data.
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