Airport Surface Research Articles

Research on Joint Optimization of Airport Surface Based on Improved A* Algorithm

Joint optimization of runway and taxiway will help increase the usage rate of airport’s existing hardware and software resources and ease flight delays. Firstly, the paper considers the relevant regulations of taxiing and the constraints of runway release interval, and takes the shortest total taxi time of each flight as the objective function to construct a joint optimization model based on the basic element layout of the airport. Secondly, the A* algorithm is improved for its characteristics and the actual situation of the airport surface, and the optimization model is solved by this improved method. Finally, taking Nanjing Lukou International Airport as an example, the optimal solution obtained by improved A* algorithm is compared with the actual running data to verify the applicability of the model.

Airport Surface Modelling and Simulation Based on Timed Coloured Petri Net

In order to satisfy the requirements of International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) for aircraft taxi route planning in Advanced Surface Movement Guidance and Control System (A-SMGCS), an airport surface operation modelling and simulation approach based on timed and coloured Petri net is presented. According to the layout of the airport surface and the features of surface operation units, a static Petri net model of the airport surface is established. On this basis, in line with the requirements on the aircraft taxiing velocity in ICAO DOC 9830, the dynamic Petri net model of the airport surface operation is established by adding the time attribute to the static model. Additionally, the method of defining the capacity of airport operation unit place is proposed and the constraints of the airport surface operation are incorporated using Petri net elements. Unlike other papers in the field, the airport surface Petri net model established in this paper can simulate conflict-free taxiing using a Petri net simulator without relying on other model-independent algorithms. Based on the CPN Tools software, taking Toulouse Airport as an example, the validity of the model has been verified by comparing the model running data with real flight data.

Characteristics of measured extreme thunderstorm near-surface wind gusts in the United States

Winds generated from thunderstorms have been shown to be important in wind engineering. However, the collection of data for these events has been limited. In this study, thunderstorm wind speeds from airport surface stations (i.e., ASOS) in the United States (U.S.) were analyzed. Overall the analysis showed significant directional and regional preferences. The results revealed that a large majority of thunderstorm wind speeds >75 mph (33.4 m/s) had a westerly component and had a preference toward the central United States. Annual maximum wind speeds >29 mph (12.4 m/s) from over 400 ASOS stations were employed in a cluster analysis using k-means. For both non-directional and directional analyses, the statistical character of the wind speeds is different for different wind speed magnitudes. Probability distributions fit to the data showed best fit to a generalized extreme value distribution with an average shape parameter of approximately −0.1, suggesting a Gumbel fit would be conservative. Statistical analysis also revealed the significance of small sample sizes and the presence of ‘outliers’, that when analyzed, had a significant effect on the parameters of the fitted probability distribution. A simple data-driven methodology is proposed to utilize both site-specific and regional data in extreme wind analysis.

Topological data analysis for aviation applications

Aviation data sets are increasingly high-dimensional and sparse. Consequently, the underlying features and interactions are not easily uncovered by traditional data analysis methods. Recent advancements in applied mathematics introduce topological methods, offering a new approach to obtain these features. This paper applies the fundamental notions underlying topological data analysis and persistent homology (TDA/PH) to aviation data analytics. We review past aviation research that leverage topological methods, and present a new computational case study exploring the topology of airport surface connectivity. In each case, we connect abstract topological features with real-world processes in aviation, and highlight potential operational and managerial insights.

Implementation of a pavement management system for maintenance and rehabilitation of airport surfaces

Airport pavements should satisfy safe and regular aircraft operations; thus, it is necessary to monitor these surfaces and implement expensive maintenance and rehabilitation works. The Airport Pavement Management System (APMS) is an approach to monitor the pavement condition and to determine the priorities for intervention, to plan, and to allocate resources through procedures. The method for monitoring pavement conditions is currently adopted by the airport management company because it is necessary to the airport operability. The study focuses on the paved network of an Italian airport that is composed of a runway, a parallel taxiway and five exit taxiways. Measures of load bearing capacity, transversal and longitudinal evenness, pavement-tire adherence, and pavement distresses were collected and merged to identify the needed maintenance and rehabilitation works. The results revealed the presence of critical sections, where several structural and functional distresses were. The needed structural and functional works involved the greater parts of the runway and the parallel taxiway, and two exit taxiways. Given the high operational impact of the needed works, they were scheduled to be conducted within three phases in order to minimize the impact on the traffic, reducing the closure period to 15 consecutive days. In general, the results summarized approaches typical of different conditions: the article has highlighted that the Pavement Management System (PMS) requires multiple analyses to consider various indices and correctly manage existing pavements having different competences to conduct comprehensive and appropriate analyses.

Aircraft Surface Trajectory Prediction Method Based on LSTM with Attenuated Memory Window

With the rapid development of the global air transport industry, airport surface traffic is increasingly busy. The safety hazards of taxiing conflict still exist during the airport operation for the initially planned taxiing path about aircraft, which directly affects the operational safety and efficiency of the airport surface. Using the correlation and dependence between the position sequences of aircraft glide motion, a method based on Long Short Term Memory networks (LSTM) is used. Combining the change of the motion state of the surface aircraft, the attenuation memory window is introduced to improve the hidden layer structure to further enhance the prediction accuracy in the LSTM model, and it is compared and verified under different parameters. The method realizes the target of surface position prediction for the aircraft in future period, lays the foundation for aircraft surface taxiing conflict detecting, and avoids taxiing conflict.

An Empirical Study on Low Emission Taxiing Path Optimization of Aircrafts on Airport Surfaces from the Perspective of Reducing Carbon Emissions

Aircraft emissions are the main cause of airport air pollution. One of the keys to achieving airport energy conservation and emission reduction is to optimize aircraft taxiing paths. The traditional optimization method based on the shortest taxi time is to model the aircraft under the assumption of uniform speed taxiing. Although it is easy to solve, it does not take into account the change of the velocity profile when the aircraft turns. In view of this, this paper comprehensively considered the aircraft’s taxiing distance, the number of large steering times and collision avoidance in the taxi, and established a path optimization model for aircraft taxiing at airport surface with the shortest total taxi time as the target. The genetic algorithm was used to solve the model. The experimental results show that the total fuel consumption and emissions of the aircraft are reduced by 35% and 46%, respectively, before optimization, and the taxi time is greatly reduced, which effectively avoids the taxiing conflict and reduces the pollutant emissions during the taxiing phase. Compared with traditional optimization methods that do not consider turning factors, energy saving and emission reduction effects are more significant. The proposed method is faster than other complex algorithms considering multiple factors, and has higher practical application value. It is expected to be applied in the more accurate airport surface real-time running trajectory optimization in the future. Future research will increase the actual interference factors of the airport, comprehensively analyze the actual situation of the airport’s inbound and outbound flights, dynamically adjust the taxiing path of the aircraft and maintain the real-time performance of the system, and further optimize the algorithm to improve the performance of the algorithm.

Methodologies for assessing the longitudinal roughness of airport taxiways and runways

As a significant indicator of the condition of airport surfaces, the longitudinal roughness significantly affects the comfort and safety of passengers and crew members when navigating the airplanes on the airport taxiways and runways, which is why the location of uneven zones and their prompt rehabilitation is one of main tasks in managing the airport infrastructure. Several different methodologies are available to assess the pavement surface roughness. Some of them, such as the International Roughness Index (IRI), have been taken from road practices. Boing has developed a methodology that takes into account differences in the design of aircraft and road vehicles and this methodology is specified within the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) standard. In addition, various softwares are being developed which, using mathematical models, simulate aircraft movement along the measured profile, and thus determine the parameters related to longitudinal roughness of the surface. This paper presents the methods and their application on a concrete example of an airport runway pavement.

RETRACTED: A new dynamic pushback control method for reducing fuel-burn costs: Using predicted taxi-out time

Abstract Long departure-taxi-out time leads to significant airport surface congestion, fuel-burn costs, and excessive emissions of greenhouse gases. To reduce these undesirable effects, a Predicted taxi-out time-based Dynamic Pushback Control (PDPC) method is proposed. The implementation of this method requires two steps: first, the taxi-out times for aircraft are predicted by the least-squares support-vector regression approach of which the parameters are optimized by an introduced improved Firefly algorithm. Then, a dynamic pushback control model equipped with a linear gate-hold penalty function is built, along with a proposed iterative taxiway queue-threshold optimization algorithm for solving the model. A case study with data obtained from Beijing International airport (PEK) is presented. The taxi-out time prediction model achieves predictive accuracy within 3 min and 5 min by 84.71% and 95.66%, respectively. The results of the proposed pushback method show that total operation cost and fuel-burn cost achieve a 14.0% and 21.1% reduction, respectively, as compared to the traditional K-control policy. (3) From the perspective of implementation, using PDPC policy can significantly reduce the queue length in taxiway and taxi-out time. The total operation cost and fuel-burn cost can be curtailed by 37.2% and 52.1%, respectively, as compared to the non-enforcement of any pushback control mechanism. These results show that the proposed pushback control model can reduce fuel-burn costs and airport surface congestion effectively.

GNSS Array Antenna for Mitigating Multipath Errors in Urban Environment

GNSS signal vulnerability has been a major concern especially for safety-of-life applications such as aircraft operations. Therefore, a GNSS array antenna technology was investigated focusing on beamforming to mitigate multipath errors in urban environment including airport surfaces. A commercial three-element GNSS antenna and RF-Front end were used to obtain digital IF data. The recorded In-phase/Quadrature IF data for three antennas were combined with proper weight to form beams towards satellites after so-called hardware biases were calibrated. Test results in multipath-rich environment demonstrated that 50-70% reduction of pseudorange errors due to multipath were possible if the beamforming algorithms were applied.

Influence of temperature and C/N ratio on nitrifying and denitrifying bacteria of biofilters treating wastewater from de-icing airport runways

One of the key elements in the operational management of airports is effective de-icing of surfaces. The run-off of precipitation water loaded with pollutants from de-icing is a considerable and costly problem. The aim of our research has been to evaluate the applicability of biofilters filled with light expanded clay aggregate (LECA) generated from incineration of sewage sludge and now serving as a matrix for the development of microorganisms. The tested biofilters treated precipitation water polluted with agents used to de-ice airports. The solution was tested on a laboratory scale, in a range of temperatures from 0 to 25°C, and at concentrations of pollutants from airport de-icing expressed as COD and varying from 503.30 to 3827.50 mg O2·L-1. The tested filling allowed nitrifying as well as denitrifying bacteria to grow and develop even at low temperatures. Biofilters provide simultaneous nitrification and denitrification, as well as removal of organic compounds, even at 0°C. Biofilters based on the granulate prepared from fly ash from sewage sludge thermal treatment can be a cost-efficient and low-maintenance technology to treat airport surface runoff.

Integrated Surface–Airspace Model of Airport Departures

The significant growth in air traffic over the past few decades has led to increased congestion at major airports. Departure metering strategies to mitigate congestion require good models of operations at the airport, as well as in the surrounding terminal airspace. Although runways have traditionally been considered the sole capacity bottleneck in the air transportation system, large airports can exhibit multiple points of congestion, both on the surface and in the terminal area. This paper presents an integrated surface–airspace model of aircraft departure operations from pushback to the final departure fix, when the flight leaves the terminal area. The airport surface is represented as a queuing network to capture congestion at multiple locations, such as ramp, taxiways, and runways. The terminal departure airspace is modeled considering various factors, such as runway configurations, standard departure procedures, weather, and en route traffic. The proposed modeling approach is illustrated for Charlotte Douglas International Airport, the test bed for NASA’s Airspace Technology Demonstration 2 program. The model is evaluated on its ability to accurately predict various transit times, both on the surface and in the terminal area.

Treatment of de-icing contaminated surface water runoff along an airport runway using in-situ soil enriched with structural filter materials

Airport surface runoff during wintertime contains high concentrations of pavement de-icing fluids (PDFs). Uncontrolled discharge of this runoff poses a potential environmental hazard for the terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem. Several technologies for collection, transportation and treatment of contaminated runoff water are available, mainly technical systems, which require high operation and maintenance efforts. For moderately contaminated runoff, the discharge to a wastewater treatment plant is usually applied.In this study, a passive soil-based filter is proposed to treat the contaminated surface water runoff. The degradation of two PDFs was under investigation, namely Safeway® KA-Hot based on potassium acetate, and urea. The main research objective was to determine the capability of the in-situ soil and a soil based filter using zeolite and perlite as additional filter media to degrade the organic pollutants in the runoff. Column experiments at temperatures between 3 °C and 5 °C were carried out to determine the degradation potential when using 50% in-situ soil mixed with zeolite and perlite. Besides TOC, the nitrogen degradation was also under investigation. Due to the low temperatures, available nutrients are a key factor for the TOC degrading microorganisms. Overall TOC reduction rates were found from 76% up to 98%, with TOC effluent concentrations in the range of 18 to 870 mg·L−1, depending on the influent concentration. Based on the results, the use of a soil-based filter is a promising, passive, natural based solution for the treatment of de-icing runoff.

ABOUT THE TRANSITION TO QNH PRESSURE IN THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

This article discusses the advantages and disadvantages of transition to QNH pressure. The analysis of various factors affecting the flight safety has been conducted. A comparative analysis of the two types of altitude reading while approaching the airport has been carried out. The first type is the altitude reading relative to the airfield when at an aerodrome surface an altimeter altitude is equal to zero. This pressure is called QFE. The second one is estimated relatively to the sea level; in this case the aerodrome elevation must be taken into account. Such pressure is called QNH. These both pressures are used in aviation. Historically, QFE pressure was used in the USSR, and after the disintegration of the Soviet Union this type of pressure was used during takeoff and landing. In the mid - 2000s, the majority of Russian airlines began to use the foreign aircraft, mainly the airplanes produced by Boeing and Airbus Companies. Since these aircraft are produced in Western countries, they use QNH pressure, so there are some difficulties of correct altitude setting while approaching an aerodrome, this causes an aircraft descent below the level prescribed by STAR, consequently, decent below minimum safe altitude. The conclusion of necessary transition to QNH pressure was made using the example of aircraft. The article also explains why the transition to QNH pressure flights in the Russian Federation is a top priority and a necessary step for maintaining proper level of flight safety.

Review of stone mastic asphalt as a high-performance ungrooved runway surfacing

Australian runways are typically surfaced with grooved Marshall-designed dense graded asphalt (DGA). Grooving is undertaken to avoid aircraft skidding incidents during wet weather, as well as satisfying regulatory requirements. Closure of these grooves is a common distress at Australian airports and increases the risk of aircraft hydroplaning. However, there are alternative surface materials to grooved DGA that are employed internationally on runways. Of these, stone mastic asphalt (SMA) has demonstrated comparable or better performance characteristics than DGA, and can satisfy regulated surface texture requirements without the need for grooving. Locally, SMA has been implemented successfully for heavy-duty roads, but use as an airport surface in Australia has been limited, with only two trials undertaken on taxiways and aprons. Further research is required to develop an SMA specification, based on experience on Australian roads, and the international experience on airfields. Verification is also required to confirm that SMA mixtures achieve the Australian airport asphalt performance requirements, as well as the regulated surface texture limits, to confirm suitability as an ungrooved runway surface for Australian airports.

Modelling and Simulating Airport Surface Operations with Gate Conflicts

ABSTRACTThe Surface Operations Simulator and Scheduler (SOSS) is a fast-time simulation of the airport surface used to rapidly develop and test new surface scheduling concepts. Gate conflicts present a challenge for surface scheduling. A late departure pushback or early arrival sharing the same gate can cause a gate conflict, which if left unmanaged, can lead to surface gridlock. Surface scheduling concepts that meter departures at their gates can increase the likelihood of gate conflicts. In real operations, hardstand areas are used to temporality park aircraft out of the way to avoid gate conflicts. New SOSS models and functionality for hardstand operations were developed to simulate gate conflict management approaches using hardstands to temporarily park either the arrival or departure out of the way of the other. Four gate conflict management approaches were simulated with surface scheduling and their effects on surface operations were compared. The four gate conflict management approaches each allowed a unique subset of resolution actions including early departure pushback, sending the departure to the hardstand, and sending the arrival to the hardstand. The gate conflict management approaches allowing arrivals to be sent to the hardstand were found to be most successful in resolving the gate conflicts and maintaining scheduler performance measured by takeoff time predictability.

Safety assessment of ‘RNP parallel approach transitions’: a new air traffic management operational concept. Part 2 – safety design and implementation

This article describes a safety assessment of a new Air Traffic Management (ATM) operational concept—RNP Parallel Approach Transitions (RPAT)—at a hypothetical major international-hub airport. The methodology employed is that developed initially for the innovative and highly complex Single European Sky ATM Research programme but further refined by the authors and applied to a wide range of safety-related projects. Though the described application of the methodology is based on experience gained from a specific ATM project, this article does not take the form of a case study. Rather, the operational environment has been generalised and the article explains how the safety of RPAT operations would be assessed for this generalised application. Part 1 described how the required safety properties of the RPAT concept are derived at the ATM-service level—this is the highest level of abstraction, and addresses what the ATM service needs to achieve for the safe movement of aircraft in the airspace (and on the airport surface), without any reference to the underlying end-to-end ATM system. Part 2 describes how those safety properties are then allocated to the ATM system architectural elements and how they are shown to have been met in the implemented system.

Safety assessment of ‘RNP parallel approach transitions’: a new air traffic management operational concept. Part 1 – safety specification

This article describes a safety assessment of a new Air Traffic Management (ATM) operational concept—RNP Parallel Approach Transitions (RPAT)—at a hypothetical major international-hub airport. The methodology employed is that developed initially for the innovative and highly complex Single European Sky ATM Research programme but further refined by the authors and applied to a wide range of safety-related projects. Though the described application of the methodology is based on experience gained from a specific ATM project, this article does not take the form of a case study. Rather, the operational environment (OE) has been generalised and the article explains how the safety of RPAT operations would be assessed for this generalised application. Part 1 describes how the required safety properties of the RPAT concept are derived at the ATM-service level—this is the highest level of abstraction, and addresses what the ATM service needs to achieve for the safe movement of aircraft in the airspace (and on the airport surface), without any reference to the underlying end-to-end ATM system. Part 2 describes how those safety properties are then allocated to the ATM system architectural elements and how they are shown to have been met in the implemented system.

Minimizing airline and passenger delay cost in airport surface and terminal airspace operations

This research studies the effectiveness of incorporating airline and passenger delay cost (APDC) into an integrated airport surface and terminal airspace (ASTA) traffic management system. Most air traffic management systems typically schedule aircraft with an assumption that all flights want to be operated along the minimum fuel trajectory. However, airlines and passengers may have other preferences that can significantly influence flight schedules. Therefore, the objective of this research is to investigate the effect of incorporating APDC to ASTA scheduling, while ensuring safety. A mixed integer nonlinear programming model (MINLP-APDC) and a swap separation violating aircraft heuristic model (SSVA-APDC) are developed to minimize the cost of delays for airlines and passengers. The proposed approaches are compared to the first-come, first-serve heuristic and two integrated scheduling algorithms for ASTA operations: 1) minimizing runway makespan (MINLP-RM); and 2) minimizing flight delays (MINLP-FD). The experimental results show that the proposed approaches save at least 1.2% APDC compared to other approaches. The proposed approaches can also achieve at least 3.0% fewer flight delays than the MINLP-RM model without increasing either runway or schedule makespan. Compared to MINLP-FD, the MINLP-APDC model increases flight delays by on average 3.7% while the SSVA-APDC model achieves on average 15.1% more flight delays. Although the MINLP-APDC model outperforms the SSVA-APDC heuristic in terms of APDC and flight delays, it requires more than 30 min of computational time. Meanwhile, the SSVA-APDC heuristics requires only a few seconds to provide a feasible flight schedule, which makes it more practical.

A Study on the Strategy for Departure Aircraft Pushback Control from the Perspective of Reducing Carbon Emissions

In order to reduce the taxiing time of departing aircraft and reduce the fuel consumption and exhaust emissions of the aircraft, Shanghai Hongqiao Airport was taken as an example to study the control strategy for aircraft departure. In this paper, the influence of the number of departure aircraft on the runway utilization rate, the takeoff rate, and the departure rate of flight departures under the conditions of airport runway capacity constraints are studied. The influence of factors, such as the number of departure aircraft, the gate position of the aircraft, and the configuration of airport arrival and departure runways, on the aircraft taxiing time for departure is analyzed. Based on a multivariate linear regression equation, a time prediction model of aircraft departure taxiing time is established. The fuel consumption and pollutant emissions of aircraft are calculated. The experimental results show that, without reducing the utilization rate of the runway and the departure rate of flights, implementing a reasonable pushback number for control of departing aircraft during busy hours can reduce the departure taxiing time of aircraft by nearly 32%, effectively reducing the fuel consumption and pollutant emissions during taxiing on the airport surface.