Optimal Design of Flow Corridors to Minimize Environmental Impact with Consideration of En-Route Weather Conditions

Abstract EN

The flow corridor is a new type of flexible tube-shape airspace developed to better accommodate high levels of traffic for future air transportation systems.

To take advantage of its prominent dynamic characteristic, exploring the flexibility deployment of flow corridors by considering favourable weather conditions is a prerequisite.

This paper proposes an optimal design method to minimize the total flying cost within flow corridors with consideration of environmental impacts.

We first specify the contrail and CO2 emissions as concerned environmental indicators for flexible deployment of flow corridors.

Then, incorporating these two indicators into the objective function, an optimization model is presented to optimize the spatial location of flow corridors with consideration of the traffic demand, aircraft performance, and weather conditions.

The genetic algorithm is selected for model resolution, and the proposed method is applied in Chinese airspace for case study with benefits assessment.

Results show that the optimized 7 flow corridors cover 4.03% of flight demand in China, and the total flying cost with them could be further reduced by 3.19% with the proposed optimal design method.