Multi-Objective and Multi-Phase 4D Trajectory Optimization for Climate Mitigation-Oriented Flight Planning

Abstract

Aviation contribution to global warming and anthropogenic climate change is increasing every year. To reverse this trend, it is crucial to identify greener alternatives to current aviation technologies and paradigms. Research in aircraft operations can provide a swift response to new environmental requirements, being easier to exploit on current fleets. This paper presents the development of a multi-objective and multi-phase 4D trajectory optimization tool to be integrated within a Flight Management System of a commercial aircraft capable of performing 4D trajectory tracking in a Free Route Airspace context. The optimization algorithm is based on a Chebyshev pseudospectral method, adapted to perform a multi-objective optimization with the two objectives being the Direct Operating Cost and the climate cost of a climb-cruise-descent trajectory. The climate cost function applies the Global Warming Potential metric to derive a comprehensive cost index that includes the climate forcing produced by CO2 and non-CO2 emissions, and by the formation of aircraft-induced clouds. The output of the optimization tool is a set of Pareto-optimal 4D trajectories among which the aircraft operator can choose the best solution that satisfies both its economic and environmental goals.

Robust 4D Climate Optimal Flight Planning in Structured Airspace using Parallelized Simulation on GPUs: ROOST V1.0

“…As for climate optimal trajectory planning methods, various strategies ranging from mathematical programming (e.g., Campbell et al (2008)) to meta-heuristic (e.g., Yin et al (2018a); Yamashita et al (2020)), indirect optimal control (e.g., Sridhar et al (2011)), and direct optimal control methods (e.g., Niklaß et al (2017); Lührs et al (2021Lührs et al ( , 2016; Matthes et al (2020)) have been adopted. For instance, the direct optimal control approach has been employed by Hartjes et al (2016) to minimize flight time (or distance flown) in areas sensitive to persistent contrail formation, by Lührs et al (2021) to minimize average temperature response over the next 20 years (ATR20) associated with the non-CO 2 emissions, and by Vitali et al (2021) to minimize the global warming potential (GWP) of NO x , H 2 O, soot, SO 2 , and contrails. Using aCCFs to quantify climate impacts, Yamashita et al employed a genetic algorithm to determine climate optimal aircraft trajectories (Yamashita et al, 2020(Yamashita et al, , 2021.…”

A Comprehensive Survey on Climate Optimal Aircraft Trajectory Planning

“…Pseudospectral collocation method using GPOPS (General Pseudospectral Optimization Package) was used for the transcription to NLP problem, and then SNOPT, implementing successive quadratic programming (SQP) was employed to solve the resulting NLP problem. Vitali et al in [93] used the direct Chebyshev pseudospectral method to solve the trajectory optimization problem considering DOC and GWP for different time horizons (i.e., 20, 50, and 100 years).…”

Concurrent Trajectory Optimization and Aircraft Design for the Air Cargo Challenge Competition

“…Consequently, the approach needs to account for trajectory optimization. Typically, aircraft trajectory optimizations minimize cruise fuel consumption but they can also be used to improve data collection [12], search efficiency [13], energy efficiency [14], fuel consumption [15] or environmental impact [16]. This work focuses on a single multi-segment trajectory optimization considering take-off, climb and cruise portions while respecting the flight path continuity.…”