Design and Analysis Tools for 4D Green Trajectories in Terminal and Transition Airspaces

NASA has been involved in developing advanced automation systems for improving the efficiency of air-traffic operations, reducing controller workload and enhancing the safety in the national airspace system. In the past decade there has been emphasis on designing environmentally friendly operations that reduce fuel consumption, emission and noise as well. The objective of the proposed research is to develop a framework suitable for the design and analysis of 4D trajectories for terminal and transitional airspaces targeted for far-term implementation. The novel aspect of the proposed research addresses efficiency, throughput, and safety all in a combined and integrated manner. Advanced optimization algorithms will be used in the design of these trajectories. Research will also establish the feasibility of tracking these trajectories using 4D guidance algorithms. Analysis will be done to study the tradeoff between fuel consumption and the time of arrival. Phase I research will demonstrate the 4D trajectory synthesis and 4D guidance algorithm using realistic commercial aviation aircraft models. Phase II research will develop the tools to a level that can be used by NASA researchers in the development of NextGen concepts.

Trajectory optimization and 4D guidance algorithms can find place in the cockpit of advanced general aviation aircraft. The output of these algorithms could be directed as advisories to the electronic flight display systems. A side effect of this project is the development of advanced large scale, mixed-integer, robust, nonlinear optimization algorithms that are amenable to fast-time computation. High-complexity large-scale optimization problems arise frequently in the industry in the following areas: (1) floor planning, (2) network optimization, (3) allocation problems, (4) supply chain management, (5) transportation, (6) and scheduling applications.

4D trajectories and 4D guidance algorithms have enormous potential to solve several problems in the NAS in an integrated manner resulting in optimal performance. These two can affect improvements in throughput, efficiency and safety. Along, with GPS based navigation and datalink capability, 4D trajectories and 4D guidance systems can define the core of the vastly transformed and improved NextGen air-traffic management system. 4D trajectories and 4D guidance is an inexpensive option to extract the best performance out of the resource constrained NAS in view of projected multi-fold future demand increase. Both these concepts are expected to directly contribute to NASA efforts in designing NextGen concepts both on the ground side and the flight deck side. Trajectory optimization is an area that is of interest to NASA even outside the scope of air traffic management. All flight vehicles sub-sonic commercial aircraft, supersonic and hypersonic space access vehicles, orbiting spacecraft, planetary reentry vehicles, and even planetary surface rovers can benefit from improvements and advancements in optimal trajectory computation technology.

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