Optimizing Air-to-Air Missile Guidance using Reinforcement Learning

To increase performance of air-to-air missile guidance, a novel guidance law is developed using reinforcement learning methods. This guidance law is based on behavior obtained from optimal control methods and subsequently aims to approximate its performance. The study compares the developed guidance law to a traditional guidance law and optimal...

The Use of an Integrated Optimization Framework for Optimizing Noise and Fuel

Travelling by air has become commonplace, and more and more people can afford themselves to fly. In twelve years time, the amount of people that were carried by airlines doubled to four billion passengers in 2017. At Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, the main gateway into the Netherlands and also a large hub for connecting flights, saw a growth of 20...

Weather-adaptive noise abatement procedures: Using optimal control theory

The most common operational measure in aviation to reduce the effect of environmental noise pollution is noise abatement procedures. Noise abatement procedures are recommended flying techniques based on noise optimal trajectories, which aim at reducing the noise impact on local communities as much as possible. Atmospheric...

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...

Weather Route Optimization for Oceanic Vessels

Preface In the wake of the economical crisis of 2008, the shipping industry changed from a very profitable industry to a struggling one, aiming to optimize vessel operations in order to survive. Theories regarding route optimization based on weather and oceanic currents exist, but only few reliable industrial applications can be found. This,...

A Hybrid Optimal Control Approach to Multi-Aircraft Formation Flying

A Hybrid Optimal Control (HOC) framework which can be used in conjunction with existing optimal control software is presented. By using hybrid optimal control theory, trajectory optimization problems for systems that are both discrete time and continuous time from a mathematical perspective can be solved. A case study on multi-aircraft formation...

Contrail Mitigation through Flight Planning

Condensation trails, or contrails in short, are the white lines that can often be seen trailing high-altitude jet aircraft. Due to their interference with the local energy balance of the atmosphere they contribute to anthropogenic climate change. Research has shown strategies with great contrail mitigation potential at relatively small fuel and...

Modeling the effect of the EU ETS of airline fleet renewal and assignment

Design of robust terminal procedures: By optimization of arrival and departure trajectories

With the growth of the air traffic movements and the population of people living around airports, the number of awakenings due to aircraft noise has increased. ICAO has defined four research fields to reduce noise and one of them is implementation of noise abatement operational procedures. This includes different trajectory optimization methods,...

Multi-aircraft Trajectory Optimization for Continuous Descent Arrivals

IT is a known fact that aircraft noise and fuel emissions are the most constraining factors for the growth of aviation. Continuous Descent Arrivals (CDAs) provide significant reductions in fuel consumption and noise footprint on the ground, by following idle thrust descent and eliminating low altitude leveling off. However, limitations such as...

Noise Abatement 3D Flight Planning Using a Snake Algorithm

The aviation industry has struggled with reducing the amount of noise that aircraft generate, especially when flying close to communities. This effort has led to the introduction of technological and operational novelties such as efficient trajectory planning. In line with these operational efforts, a tool has been designed in the TU Delft,...

Inclusion of noise-related constraints in departure procedure optimization

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...

Contrail Mitigation by means of 4D Aircraft Trajectory Optimisation

Aviation has a significant impact on the global atmosphere. Next to particle and gas emissions, the increase of cloud cover might increasingly contribute to aviation induced climate change. Water contained in the exhaust of jet engines locally raises the relative humidity levels sufficiently for contrail formation to occur. These contrails can...

Evaluation of Intermediate Refueling Stops in Long-Haul Flight Operations

The aviation sector has suffered a big blow from the series of recent economic depressions. Airlines are struggling to stay in business and are looking for multiple ways to cut on expenses. This has led to the initiation of studies to find strategies which will reduce an airline’s overall fuel consumption. One of these methods is to initiate...

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...