Abstract

With an increasing population of super heavy aircraft operating in the National Airspace System and with the introduction of NextGen technologies, the wake vortex problem has become more important for airport capacity and the en-route air traffic operations. The vortices generated by heavy and super heavy aircraft can generate potential hazards to other aircraft on nearby flight paths. Moreover, the design of new airport procedures needs to consider the interactions between aircraft in closer paths. New methods and models are required to examine these effects before new operations are conducted in the National Airspace System (NAS). Reducing wake vortex separations to safe levels between successive aircraft is essential for NextGen operations. One approach taken recently by ICAO and the FAA is to introduce a re-categorization (ReCat) of wake vortex separations to six groups from the existing five groups employed by the FAA in the United States. Reduced aircraft separations can increase capacity in the NAS with corresponding savings in delay times at busy airports. Future NextGen operations are likely to introduce smaller aircraft separations in the en-route and in the terminal area. Such operations would require better methods to identify potential wake hazards from reduced separation operations. This dissertation describes a model to identify potential wake encounters in the future NAS. The goal of the dissertation is to describe the Enhanced Wake Encounter Model (EWEM), a model that employs a detailed NASA-developed wake model to generate wake zones for different aircraft categories under different flight conditions that can be used with aircraft flight path data to identify potential wake encounters. The main contribution of this model is to gain an understanding of potential wake encounters under future NAS operations. Ph. D.

Abstract

This dissertation presents a research effort to evaluate wake vortex mitigation procedures and technologies in order to decrease aircraft separations, which could result in a runway capacity increase. Aircraft separation is a major obstacle to increasing the operational efficiency of the final approach segment and the runway. An aircraft in motion creates an invisible movement of air called wake turbulence, which has been shown to be dangerous to aircraft that encounter it. To avoid this danger, aircraft separations were developed in the 1970s, that allows time for wake to be dissipated and displaced from an aircraft's path. Though wake vortex separations have been revised, they remain overly conservative. This research identified 16 concepts and 3 sub-concepts for wake mitigation from the literature. The dissertation describes each concept along with its associated benefits and drawbacks. All concepts are grouped, based on common dependencies required for implementation, into four categories: airport fleet dependent, parallel runway dependent, single runway dependent, and aircraft or environmental condition dependent. Dynamic wake vortex mitigation was the concept chosen for further development because of its potential to provide capacity benefit in the near term and because it is initiated by air traffic control, not the pilot. Dynamic wake vortex mitigation discretizes current wake vortex aircraft groups by analyzing characteristics for each individual pair of leader and follower aircraft as well as the environment where the aircraft travel. This results in reduced aircraft separations from current static separation standards. Monte Carlo simulations that calculate the dynamic wake vortex separation required for a follower aircraft were performed by using the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Aircraft Vortex Spacing System (AVOSS) Prediction Algorithm (APA) model, a semi-empirical wake vortex behavior model that predicts wake vortex decay as a function of atmospheric turbulence and stratification. Maximum circulation capacities were calculated based on the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) proposed wake recategorization phase II (RECAT II) 123 x 123 matrix of wake vortex separations. This research identified environmental turbulence and aircraft weight as the parameters with the greatest influence on wake vortex circulation strength. Wind has the greatest influence on wake vortex lateral behavior, and aircraft mass, environmental turbulence, and wind have the greatest influence on wake vortex vertical position. The research simulated RECAT II and RECAT III dynamic wake separations for Chicago O'Hare International (ORD), Denver International Airport (DEN) and LaGuardia Airport (LGA). The simulation accounted for real-world conditions of aircraft operations during arrival and departure: static and dynamic wake vortex separations, aircraft fleet mix, runway occupancy times, aircraft approach speeds, aircraft wake vortex circulation capacity, environmental conditions, and operational error buffers. Airport data considered for this analysis were based on Airport Surface Detection Equipment Model X (ASDE-X) data records at ORD during a 10-month period in the year 2016, a 3-month period at DEN, and a 4-month period at LGA. Results indicate that further reducing wake vortex separation distances from the FAA's proposed RECAT II static matrix, of 2 nm and less, shifts the operational bottleneck from the final approach segment to the runway. Consequently, given current values of aircraft runway occupancy time under some conditions, the airport runway becomes the limiting factor for inter-arrival separations. One of the major constraints of dynamic wake vortex separation at airports is its dependence on real-time or near-real-time data collection and broadcasting technologies. These technologies would need to measure and report temperature, environmental turbulence, wind speed, air humidity, air density, and aircraft weight, altitude, and speed. PHD