Terminal area control rules and eVTOL adaptive scheduling model for multi-vertiport system in urban air Mobility

Abstract

On the one hand, vertiports in economically developed areas will present the operation mode of multi-vertiport, and the contradiction between the development of urban air mobility and limited operating resources is very serious. On the other hand, unlike fixed-wing aircraft or helicopters, the electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft have different operating processes and limited battery energy supply. Long flight times in the terminal area pose a risk of exhaustion and great safety challenges. Given the terminal area of the multi-vertiport system (MVS-TA), this paper investigates the adaptive control system (ACS), which includes the design of the operating environment and the integrated scheduling model. The design of the operating environment is the basis of adaptive management, which consists of the concept of multi-ring structure and the junction control rules based on backpressure policy. Considering the power constraint and dynamic priority, an integrated model including path planning model and distributed sequencing model is constructed to solve the cooperative scheduling problem of approach-departure flights. Results from numerical analyses reveal that: First, in the case of large flight flow, ACS can achieve the efficiency and safety of MVS-TA operation better than the traditional control system. Secondly, the flight density into the terminal area has a greater impact on ACS performance relative to flight volume. With a density of less than 120 flights/hour, the operating efficiency of MVS-TA under ACS varies within 10.3% with the number of flights or density.