AbstractsTransportation

The ever-increasing use of aircraft, together with the on-going urbanization causes increasing noise nuisance due to aviation. This is attenuated by the positioning of airports close to densely populated areas. For this reason the majority of the large airports in the world indicate that noise is one of the limiting factors in the expansion of the airport. One solution of adjusting operational procedures is the adjustment of near-airport operations of aircraft. Previous research shows the application of multi-event optimizations which optimize the lateral aircraft tracks for multiple aircraft simultaneously. Although the results of these optimizations proved significant improvements in terms of community noise, still two problems remain open-ended, which prohibit (or limit) the practical implementation of the results. - The multiple aircraft departures, which currently often show dispersed flight tracks, are being concentrated onto one track. This concentration of flights onto one track allows a reduction in community noise but causes peak loads in noise at the same time. The increased technical capabilities allow aircraft to accurately follow predetermined tracks which causes problems equal to the described problem in the near future. - By repositioning aircraft tracks (and the resulting noise) the total amount of noise nuisance decreases. At the same time an increase in noise received at some locations due to the creation of new noise (noise that is new for a location). The new noise has proven to cause significant resistance to the implementation of new aircraft tracks. This thesis questions the desirability of solely focussing on the reduction of one specific community noise metric, of which the amount of people highly annoyed and awakenings have been used in the past. Instead this research aims to find to which extent peak noise loads and new noise can be taken into account in the optimization of aircraft tracks. For this purpose, two noise impact criteria have been integrated. To be able to investigate the desirability of either concentrating or dispersing aircraft tracks a multi-event optimization is implemented that allows to optimize two aircraft (Boeing 737-300 and Boeing 747-400) tracks simultaneously, for the lateral tracks as well as. Constraints with respect to noise nuisance are implemented within the optimization tool. This novelty converts the optimization problem from finding the optimum combination of fuel and community noise to finding a minimum cost function value while assuring a pre-defined level of community noise. This in turn allows to include new types of noise metrics in the cost function of the optimization.