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Projecte llegit

Títol: Automation Control of a Point Merge System at Palma de Mallorca Airport

Estudiants que han llegit aquest projecte:

Director/a: BARRADO MUXÍ, CRISTINA

Departament: DAC

Títol: Automation Control of a Point Merge System at Palma de Mallorca Airport

Data inici oferta: 09-01-2019     Data finalització oferta: 09-09-2019


Estudis d'assignació del projecte:
    GR ENG SIS TELECOMUN
    GR ENG SIST AEROESP
Tipus: Individual
 
Lloc de realització: EETAC
 
Paraules clau:
SESAR, airspace, point merge
 
Descripció del contingut i pla d'activitats:
The arrival of flights at Palma de Mallorca airport have some periods with high demmand. To absorb such demmand a Point Merge System has been proposed by the Balearic Economic Cicle. In this project a complete simulation of the Point Merge System will be developped with the NEST tool, adding to the results an optimiser in order to prove the benefits of the system in a realistic way, with the absence of the air traffic controllers.
 
Overview (resum en anglès):
The main objective of this project is to design an automation control system for a new arrival procedure at Palma de Mallorca airport, which is the Point Merge System (PMS). This new system, suggested by Cercle d’Economia de Mallorca, allows performing Continuous Descent Approach (CDA), reducing fuel consumption, CO2 and acoustic emissions, while safety levels are enhanced and arrival capacity is increased. Additionally, the fact of introducing the automation control would remove the air traffic controllers presence, only needing one person to monitor the system.

The PMS concept was developed by Eurocontrol and is based on the merging of two arrival flows in one single entry point, which is afterwards linked to the airport runway. Nowadays, these flows are managed by controllers who give the “direct-to” instruction to pilots to fly towards the merge point, whereas in this project this will be done by the system.

In order to achieve the aim of the project, the Network Strategic Tool (NEST) from Eurocontrol has been used, which allows traffic simulations, together with Matlab, in which the NEST files have been read and different time computations have been performed to determine when the aircraft gets the “direct-to” and in this way ensure safety.

The obtained results are for two diferent scenarios. On one hand, real traffic data from summer 2018 has been considered, which are used to know the current behavior of the system. On the other hand, with the webpage Demand Data Repository (DDR) of Eurocontrol a traffic forecast for summer 2024 has been generated, which is used to estimate the behaviour and capacity of the system in a future with more traffic.

With the results analysis, it is possible to check that nowadays most aircraft would be authorized with a direct entry to the merge point, without waiting. For the 2024 case, most aircraft would have to stay inside the system with a waiting time due to the increase of flights. Lastly, in both scenarios route length increases, while it is possible to perform CDA thanks to the predictability obtained with the system.

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