Using Trajectory Optimization to Minimize Aircraft Noise Impact

With the rapid development of modern aviation industry, a new challenge has been brought to the urban ecology that how to make a balance between gradually increasing aviation activities and the quality of human life of the residents living within the vicinities of the airports. Fresh emphasis has been drawn on searching for a quiet flight by optimizing the operation of aircraft. In this research, a multi-objective trajectory optimisation framework to minimizing environmental impacts especially for noise annoyance, based on genetic algorithm has been developed. Firstly, a parameterization method is established for departure phase to decouple the flight motion in horizontal and lateral planes. Necessary constraints are considered in both planes to approach real flight scenarios. Secondly, in order to decrease the number of free parameters as well as to lower the dimension of the optimisation search space, a lateral parameterization method based on Bézier curve has been proposed. Then a comprehensive flight mechanics program FLIGHT has been introduced to evaluate the aircraft noise impact towards the Noise Sensitive Areas (NSAs) to provide the value of cost functions. Finally, the original non-linear optimal control problem could be discretized and transformed into a parameter optimisation problem which can be solved by the genetic algorithm. A number of numerical examples have been presented to demonstrate the capability and applicability of proposed technique to solve departure trajectory optimisation problem aiming at minimizing noise and other environmental concerns. Results show that this framework is capable, effective and flexible of solving trajectory optimization problem for aircraft noise impact minimization.