Noise-Sensitive Final Approach Trajectory Optimization for Runway-Independent Aircraft

Runway-independent aircraft have been proposed to increase passenger throughput at crowded urban airports via the use of vertiports or stub runways. Simultaneous non-interfering (SNI) traffic procedures will minimize impact on existing fixedwing traffic. This paper introduces a SNI trajectory generation algorithm that treats existing fixed-wing traffic corridors as impenetrable obstacles and optimizes over multiple parameters including ground noise, fuel, and time. Flight envelope limits are represented as search-space constraints, and computational efficiency is gained through an empirical noise model and uniform-cost search strategy. Example final approach trajectories illustrate the effects of airspace obstacle placement and varied optimization function weights. Nomenclature a - acceleration min a , max a - min/max acceleration constraints CT - thrust coefficient