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At least 667 records · Page 37
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Regulatory Considerations for Future Regional Air Mobility Aircraft

Regional Air Mobility (RAM) is a term that is used to describe equitable, economical, and environmentally friendly access to air commerce at local airports. The term “regional” can imply a wide range of aircraft payload and/or number of passengers carried, types of airports served, distances between aircraft origin/destination pairs, crew requirements, runways lengths, required energy reserves, and much more. This paper describes the regulations and other considerations that apply to RAM operations in the conterminous United States and defines a notional set of requirements to apply to a planned NASA study on RAM aircraft sizing. These notional requirements include: (1) a payload sufficient to carry up to nine passengers or equivalent cargo, (2) nominal distances between the origin and destination of at least 100 miles, with 300 miles desired, (3) ability to operate from a runway that is no more than 3,364 ft in length at a density altitude of 3,100 ft, with a desire for a 2,665 ft runway at 4,100 ft density altitude, and (4) energy reserves at least sufficient for 45 minutes of operation at normal cruise power, with a desire for energy reserves that also include diversion to an alternate airport at least 50 nautical miles away. Aircraft that meet these desired capabilities will be able to provide commercial access to at least 2,507 airports in the conterminous United States without revision to airworthiness, operating, or security regulations.

Nicholas K Borer↗
DOE OSTI2021

Air Passengers' Joint Decisions about Ground Access and Parking

With increasing air travel demand, it is important for airports to evaluate infrastructure investment and demand management solutions to curb traffic congestion and minimize landside energy consumption. Understanding the decisions and choices air passengers make about their ground access modes is important for both developing infrastructure planning strategies and assessing the impacts of emerging modes on airport revenues, particularly from parking. But parking choice is often overlooked in the modeling of airport ground access choices. To address this gap, NREL's Athena team developed a nested multinomial logit regression model based on a passenger survey conducted at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport in 2015. This fact sheet is an overview of the approach and its impact.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2024

A Multi-Dimensional Benefit Assessment of Automated Mobility Platforms (AMP) for Large Facilities

Automated Mobility Platform (AMP) is a general term for intelligently managed passenger mobility systems that leverage automation and electrification to improve system performance and sustainability through the integration of real-time data streams with advanced decision-making processes tailored for use in large facilities. Using airports as an example, the rapid growth in air travel demand has led to facility expansions and congested terminals, which directly impacts equity (e.g., increased challenges for passengers with reduced mobility [PRMs]) and sustainability - both of which are important metrics often neglected during the engineering design process. Therefore, to evaluate systems and inform critical decisions more effectively, a holistic evaluation framework is proposed that includes equity, sustainability, and infrastructure perspectives - referred to as a multidimensional benefit assessment. More specifically, the following analysis focuses on: (1) mobility, with emphasis on travel time and accessibility within an airport, contrasting existing systems with the proposed AMP system; (2) equity analysis, specifically to the PRM community, but with an eye to the whole of society; (3) energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with intra-airport mobility, comparing and contrasting modes as well as impacts on overall airport operations efficiency; and (4) fundamental changes in building design enabled by AMPs for larger and more flexible, functional, and energy-efficient structures.

ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
DOE OSTI2026

De-Risking Megawatt-Scale Charging

Part of Session 9 of the 2025 Airport Energy Management Symposium: Energy Technology Futures - When Technology is Changing Faster than Planning, How Do You Prepare? This session will look at the current state of novel technologies and how airports might prepare to just the right amount to be prepared for the uncertainties. This presentation will focus on de-risking megawatt-scale charging for airport and aviation applications.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
NASA NTRS2014

IEEE 802.16J-Relay Fortified Aeromacs Networks; Benefits and Challenges

Aeronautical Mobile Airport Communications System (AeroMACS) is an IEEE 802.16 standard-based (WiMAX) broadband aviation transmission technology, developed to provide safety critical communications coverage for airport surface in support of fixed and mobile ground to ground applications and services. We have previously demonstrated that IEEE 802.16j-amendment-based WiMAX is most feasible for AeroMACS applications. The principal argument in favor of application of IEEE 802.16j technology is the flexible and cost effective extension of radio coverage that is afforded by relay fortified WiMAX networks, with virtually no increase in the power requirements. In this article, following introductory remarks on airport surface communications, WiMAX and AeroMACS; the IEEE 802.16j-based WiMAX technology and multihop relay systems are briefly described. The two modes of relay operation supported by IEEE 802.16j amendment; i.e., transparent (TRS) and non-transparent (NTRS) modes, are discussed in some detail. Advantages and disadvantages of using TRS and NTRS in AeroMACS networks are summarized in a table. Practical issues vis--vis the inclusion of relays in AeroMACS networks are addressed. It is argued that the selection of relay type may affect a number of network parameters. A discussion on specific benefits and challenges of inclusion of relays in AeroMACS networks is provided. The article concludes that in case it is desired or necessary to exclusively employ one type of relay mode for all applications throughout an AeroMACS network, the proper selection would be the non-transparent mode.

Networks↗
NASA NTRS2016

ICN Deicing Operations Analysis

Aircraft deicing and anti-icing on airport ground in winter weather conditions is important to ensure safe departure takeoff and enroute flying. At the same time, it imposes additional workload to controllers and airport operators, and causes delays to airlines and passengers.This presentation shows the initial results of analyzing the deicing related operations at Incheon International Airport (ICN). It describes the deicing operations concept, procedures, and deicing making processes at ICN. It also looks into the three-month ICN operation data from Dec 2015 to Feb 2016 to identify the characteristics of the current day deicing operation.This work is under the joint collaboration between Korea Aerospace Research Institute and NASA. The objective is to develop a deicing operation simulation capability in NASA's fast time simulation environment to study and improve deicing operations efficiency.

Airport Surface ATM↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Objective Measurement Assessment of Departure Advisories for Ramp Controllers from a Human-In-The-Loop Simulation

NASA has developed and demonstrated an integrated arrival, departure, and surface concept and technology for efficient air traffic management in busy terminal environments under the Airspace Technology Demonstration 2 (ATD-2) subproject. In April/May 2019, NASA conducted a human-in-the-loop (HITL) simulation with ramp and tower controllers having experience at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (DFW). The purpose of this HITL was to evaluate the impacts of various surface metering goals in ramp operations at DFW and test new features of the ATD-2 ramp controller decision support tools. This paper evaluates the quantitative metrics from the simulation results related to airport performance and surface metering given various departure scheduling advisories for ramp controllers. The objective measurements compared include the controller’s compliance with the target times for pushback and spot arrival, the number of metered flights, aircraft gate hold and taxi time, runway throughput, and the number of aircraft on the surface. The simulation results show that there were no statistically significant benefits from surface metering at DFW for airport performance due to several simulation artifacts notably different from real operations. Considering controller workload and situation awareness, following either gate pushback or spot arrival advisory could be a better metering option than utilizing both advisories when surface metering is applied at DFW.

airport ramp traffic control decision support↗
DOE OSTI2023

A general spatial-temporal framework for short-term building temperature forecasting at arbitrary locations with crowdsourcing weather data

Weather forecasting has been a critical component to predict and control building energy consumption for better building energy management. Without accessibility to other data sources, the onsite observed temperatures or the airport temperatures are used in forecast models. In this paper, we present a novel approach by utilizing the crowdsourcing weather data from neighboring personal weather stations (PWS) to improve the weather forecast accuracy around buildings using a general spatial-temporal modeling framework. The final forecast is based on the ensemble of local forecasts for the target location using neighboring PWSs. Our approach is distinguished from existing literature in various aspects. First, we leverage the crowdsourcing weather data from PWS in addition to public data sources. In this way, the data is at much finer time resolution (e.g., at 5-minute frequency) and spatial resolution (e.g., arbitrary location vs grid). Second, our proposed model incorporates spatial-temporal correlation information of weather variables between the target building and a set of neighboring PWSs so that underlying correlations can be effectively captured to improve forecasting performance. Here, we demonstrate the performance of the proposed framework by comparing to the benchmark models on temperature forecasting for a building located at an arbitrary location at San Antonio, Texas, USA. In general, the proposed model framework equipped with machine learning technique such as Random Forest can improve forecasting by 50% compares with persistent model and has 90% chance to outperform airport forecast in short-term forecasting. In a real-time setting, the proposed model framework can provide more accurate temperature forecasting results compared with using airport temperature forecast for most forecast horizon. Moreover, we analyze the sensitivity of model parameters to gain insights on how crowdsourcing data from the neighboring personal weather stations impacts forecasting performance. Finally, we implement our model in other cities such as Syracuse and Chicago to test the model's performance in different landforms and climate types.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

Supply chain optimization of sustainable aviation fuel from carinata in the Southeastern United States

We report carinata is a purpose-grown oilseed feedstock for renewable fuels, including sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) that can replace conventional aviation fuel (CAF). Given carinata is a new crop in the Southeastern United States, it is crucial to analyze its sustainability from a supply chain perspective. This study developed a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model and simulated it for 20 years, starting from a farm (county-level data) and ending at the airport. About 2.06 million ha in Alabama, Florida, and Georgia combined were found suitable for carinata production. Given the three-year rotation period, about 0.69 million hectares can be cultivated annually, approximately 65% of which was in Georgia. About 2.4% of the combined SAF annual demand of four major airports (about 210 thousand t) in the study area is satisfied at that level of carinata cultivation. However, all available SAF was supplied to the Atlanta airport as this decision minimizes the supply chain cost. A total of 1343 storage units, one oil extraction mill, and one biorefinery were needed to meet the overall demand. We found that SW Georgia is the top supplier of carinata seeds. The unit cost of production and carbon intensity were estimated to be $\$$0.89 L -1 (or $\$$26.79 GJ -1 ) and 0.91 kg CO 2 e L -1 (or 27.28 kg CO 2 e GJ -1 ), respectively. This carbon intensity of carinata-based SAF was 67.8% lower than that of CAF. With variations included in SAF demand, yield, and soil carbon sequestration, carbon savings remained between 66.5% and 67.8%. Given the GHG advantage of SAF over CAF, there is justification for subsidies required to make SAF competitive.

10 SYNTHETIC FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Identifying a regional aerosol baseline in the eastern North Atlantic using collocated measurements and a mathematical algorithm to mask high-submicron-number-concentration aerosol events

Abstract. High-time-resolution measurements of in situ aerosol and cloud properties provide the ability to study regional atmospheric processes that occur on timescales of minutes to hours. However, one limitation to this approach is that continuous measurements often include periods when the data collected are not representative of the regional aerosol. Even at remote locations, submicron aerosols are pervasive in the ambient atmosphere with many sources. Therefore, periods dominated by local aerosol should be identified before conducting subsequent analyses to understand aerosol regional processes and aerosol–cloud interactions. Here, we present a novel method to validate the identification of regional baseline aerosol data by applying a mathematical algorithm to the data collected at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility in the eastern North Atlantic (ENA). The ENA central facility (C1) includes an aerosol observing system (AOS) for the measurement of aerosol physical, optical, and chemical properties at time resolutions from seconds to minutes. A second temporary supplementary facility (S1), located ∼0.75 km from C1, was deployed for ∼1 year during the Aerosol and Cloud Experiments (ACE-ENA) campaign in 2017. First, we investigate the local aerosol at both locations. We associate periods of high submicron number concentration (Ntot) in the fine-mode condensation particle counter (CPC) and size distributions from the Ultra-High Sensitivity Aerosol Spectrometer (UHSAS) as a function of wind direction using a meteorology sensor with local sources. Elevated concentrations of Aitken-mode (< 100 nm diameter) particles were observed in correspondence with the wind directions associated with airport operations. At ENA, the Graciosa Airport and its associated activities were found to be the main sources of high-concentration aerosol events at ENA, causing peaks in 1 min Ntot that exceeded 8000 and 10 000 cm−3 at C1, in summer and winter, respectively, and 5000 cm−3 at S1 in summer. Periods with high Ntot not associated with these wind directions were also observed. As a result, the diverse local sources at ENA yielded a poor relationship between Ntot measurements collected at C1 and S1 (R2=0.03 with a slope =0.05±0.001). As a first approach to mask these events, the time periods when the wind direction was associated with the airport operations (west to northwest and southeast to south at C1 and east to south at S1) were applied. The meteorological masks removed 38.9 % of the data at C1 and 43.4 % at S1, and they did not significantly improve the relationship between the two sites (R2=0.18 with a slope =0.06±0.001). Due to the complexity of high-Ntot events observed at ENA, we develop and validate a mathematical ENA Aerosol Mask (ENA-AM) to identify high-Ntot events using 1 min resolution data from the AOS CPC at C1 and S1. After its parameterization and application, ENA-AM generated a high correlation between Ntot in the summer at C1 and S1 (R2=0.87 with a slope =0.84±0.001). We identified the regional baseline at ENA to be 428±228 cm−3 in the summer and 346±223 cm−3 in the winter. Lastly, we compared masked measurements from the AOS with the ARM Aerial Facility (AAF) during flights over C1 in the summer to understand submicron aerosol vertical mixing over C1. The high correlation (R2=0.71 with a slope of 1.04±0.01) observed between C1 and the AAF Ntot collected within an area of 10 km surrounding ENA and at altitudes < 500 m indicated that the submicron aerosol at ENA was well mixed within the first 500 m of the marine boundary layer during the month of July during ACE-ENA. Our novel method for determining a regional aerosol baseline at ENA can be applied to other time periods and at other locations with validation by a secondary site or additional collocated measurements.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS1973

Effectiveness evaluation of STOL transport operations

A short-takeoff and landing (STOL) systems simulation model has been developed and implemented in a computer code (known as STOL OPS) which permits evaluation of the operation of a STOL aircraft and its avionics in a commercial airline operating environment. STOL OPS concentrated on the avionics functions of navigation, guidance, control, communication, hazard aviodance, and systems management. External world factors influencing the operation of the STOL aircraft include each airport and its geometry, air traffic at each airport, air traffic control equipment and procedures, weather (including winds and visibility), and the flight path between each airport served by the route. The development of the STOL OPS program provides NASA a set of computer programs which can be used for detailed analysis of a STOL aircraft and its avionics and permit establishment of system requirements as a function of airline mission performance goals.

Hitt, E. F.↗
NASA NTRS1974

Parametric study of STOL short-haul transport engine cycles and operational techniques to minimize community noise impact

The effect of aircraft operational techniques in the terminal area on community noise impact of future short haul aircraft was investigated. Aircraft equipped with mechanical flap (MF) and aircraft with externally blown flap (EBF) were used to study the noise impact at four U.S. airports. The four airports were: (1) Hanscom Field (Boston), (2) Washington National (D.C.), (3) Midway (Chicago) and (4) Orange County (California). With the exception of Washington National (D.C.), the study showed that a reduction of approximately 40 percent in the number of people highly annoyed can be obtained by using the recommended operational techniques. The evaluation procedures and methodology developed in the study represent an advance in acoustical state-of-the-art and provide an effective and useful tool for determining aircraft noise impact on the airport community.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1975

Physical environment

Environmental legislation affecting airports and the more common environmental effects resulting from airport construction are discussed with special emphasis on general aviation airports. The discussion is focused on the regulation of noise, pollution, and water quality.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1977

Benefit-cost evaluation of an intra-regional air service in the Bay area

Utilization of an iterative statistical model is presented to evaluate combinations of commuter airport sites and surface transportation facilities in confunction with service by a given commuter aircraft type in light of Bay Area regional growth alternatives and peak and off-peak regional travel patterns. The model evaluates such transportation options with respect to criteria of airline profitability, public acceptance, and public and private nonuser costs. It incorporates information modal split, peak and off-peak use of the air commuter fleet, terminal and airport cost, development costs and uses of land in proximity to the airport sites, regional population shifts, and induced zonal shifts in travel demand. The model is multimodal in its analytical capability, and performs exhaustive sensitivity analysis.

Haefner, L. E.↗
NASA NTRS1978

Executive summary: Benefit-cost evaluation of an intra-regional air service in the Bay Area and a technology assessment of transportation system investments

The benefits and costs that would result from an intra-regional air service operation in the San Francisco Bay area were determined by utilizing an iterative statistical decision model to evaluate combinations of commuter airport sites and surface transportation facilities in conjunction with service by a given commuter aircraft type in light of area regional growth alternatives and peak and off-peak regional travel patterns. The model evaluates such transportation option with respect to criteria of airline profitability, public acceptance, and public and private non-user costs. In so doing, it incorporates information on modal split, peak and off-peak use of the air commuter fleet, terminal and airport costs, development costs and uses of land in proximity to the airport sites, regional population shifts, and induced zonal shifts in travel demand. The model is multimodal in its analytic capability, and performs exhaustive sensitivity analysis.

Haefner, L. E.↗
NASA NTRS1977

An analysis of three weather-related aircraft accidents

Two aircraft accidents in 1975, one at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City on 24 June and the other at Stapleton International Airport in Denver on 7 August, were examined in detail. A third accident on 23 June 1976 at Philadelphia International Airport is being investigated. Amazingly, there was a spearhead echo just to the north of each accident site. The echoes formed from 5 to 50 min in advance of the accident and moved faster than other echoes in the vicinity. These echoes were photographed by National Weather Service radars, 130-205 km away. At closer ranges, however, one or more circular echoes were depicted by airborne and ground radars. These cells were only 3-5 km in diameter, but they were accompanied by downdrafts of extreme intensity, called downbursts. All accidents occurred as aircraft, either descending or climbing, lost altitude while experiencing strong wind shear inside downburst cells.

Fujita, T. T.↗
NASA NTRS1978

Air terminals and liquid hydrogen commercial air transports

An initial appraisal is made of results of two studies of the ground requirements of liquid hydrogen (LH2) air transports. Each hypothesized the use of a 400-passenger 5500 nautical mile range subsonic commercial LH2 transport. Two of the world's busiest commercial airports, Chicago O'Hare International and San Francisco International, were selected for study. The current and predicted wide-body traffic at these airports was assumed to simulate the LH2 transport traffic at these airports in the 1990-1995 time period. Both studies produced conceptual designs for facilities to generate the required quantities of fuel from pipeline gaseous hydrogen and to deliver liquid hydrogen to the airplanes. Although the LH2 and jet fuel facilities were kept apart, both study teams found it practical to converge the fuel supply lines so that with proper safety and operational procedures and specialized LH2 equipment both LH2 and jet fuel transports can use common ramp and gate facilities.

Korycinski, P. F.↗
NASA NTRS1980

Fog dispersion

The concept of using the charged particle technique to disperse warm fog at airports is investigated and compared with other techniques. The charged particle technique shows potential for warm fog dispersal, but experimental verification of several significant parameters, such as particle mobility and charge density, is needed. Seeding and helicopter downwash techniques are also effective for warm fog disperals, but presently are not believed to be viable techniques for routine airport operations. Thermal systems are currently used at a few overseas airports; however, they are expensive and pose potential environmental problems.

Christensen, L. S.↗