Trajectory optimization to minimize the environmental impact of departing and arriving aircraft

The aviation industry faces the challenge of reducing its climate eects. This paper aims to determine whether optimizing flight trajectories can reduce the environmental impact of aircraft during the climb and descent phases. It addresses the research gap in sustainable flight trajectory optimization by combining state-of-the-art research on...

Modelling and Optimization of Tilt-Rotor Aircraft Flight Trajectories

Tilt-rotor aircraft combine the helicopter’s benefit of VTOL capability and the flight performance that turboprops possess on range, speed and endurance. Tilt-rotor aircraft have the potential to decrease airport congestion and average flight delay in passenger transportation, while benefits are numerous in i.e. search and rescue, disaster...

Reachability Analysis to Enable Zero-Wait Entry Guidance: Orbital Aborts to Enhance Mission Safety

The role of traditional entry guidance systems is to ensure that the vehicle is brought from a nominal entry interface point (EIP) to the neighborhood of a designated landing site at an acceptable energy state. Such systems are designed in such a way that the landing site can be safely reached even if off-nominal conditions are present at the...

Power-assisted dynamic soaring for a reconfigurable Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Multiple-Phase Trajectory Optimization for Formation Flight in Civil Aviation

A tool is developed that is able to optimize the trajectories of multiple aircraft that fly in formation in order to obtain the minimum total fuel consumption. Several experiments are conducted to investigate the benefits of formation flight for commercial aircraft. Finally, also the influences of wind and delay on the trajectories of the...

Tailored SID & Profile Allocation for Amsterdam Airport Schiphol

Currently, only one Standard Instrument Departure (SID) track and one flight procedure is used per runway departure fix combination. In contrast to tailored arrivals, the potential benefit of tailored departures has been left relatively undiscovered. The research objective is to quantify the potential benefit of tailored SID-s and profile...

Optimal long-haul Trajectories in a Wind Field

The long-haul flights of airlines are impacted by the en-route wind fields. Flights on the same route with different directions may have significantly different flight performances. It may benefit to airlines in terms of fuel cost and on-time performance if the optimal long-haul routes are able to plan. However, the wind direction and strength...

Terminal area energy management trajectory optimization using interval analysis

Interval analysis applied to re-entry flight trajectory optimization

Trajectory optimization is an essential part of space plane mission design. One important aspect of trajectory optimization for re-entry vehicles is to minimize the total heat load at the surface when it returns and the heat flux should remain below certain limit, meanwhile, the vehicle should land at the desired point. The methods used for re...