Research On Key Techniques Of Air Traffic Flow Management

With the rapid development of our national economy and the reinforcement of the national defense power, both civil and military traffic activities are increasing at a high speed. However, the distribution of the air traffic flow is not balanced at all. When the airspace capacity cannot satisfy the demand of air flow, air traffic congestion resulted from that would not only severely compromise flight safety, but induce enormous economic losses to the military and civil aviation. Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) is the most effective and economical way to solve the air traffic congestion problem. The aeronautically developed countries such as USA and European countries have already established and are continuously perfecting their own ATFM system, and have achieved great benefits.Using the sophisticated experiences from abroad for reference and establishing our own ATFM system is the impending need of and inevitable tendency towards the speedy development of air transportation in our country. Relevant departments have already initiated the research on the ATFM system, the key technologies on flow management and system development etc,and for the first time, key technologies on coordinated flow management are included into one of the major programs of 863 Plan, named the new generation national air traffic management system, which ensures the technical advantage of the new generation national air traffic management system in the operation of ATC.This dissertation first expounds the basic concepts of ATFM and the actual situation of flow management both at home and abroad. Then it summarizes the related technology research throughout the world. In the last part, it makes an intensive research on part of the key technologies in the ATFM system with the goal of developing the national air traffic flow management system. The main contents are as follows:1. This dissertation summarizes the definition and evaluation method of air traffic capacity. Through contrastive analysis of the factors that affect the capacity and restraint conditions of different airspace units, the factors are divided into three categories, namely airspace (airport) using strategy, flight flow characteristics and actual control separation. Then static and dynamic evaluation models are established based on the time limits of the three factors. Combined with the actual need of the airport ground capacity evaluation of a lot of airports that need to reform or expand, the dissertation makes static as well as dynamic capacity evaluation of the Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport. In the airport ground dynamic capacity evaluation, the Dijkstra algorithm is used in the process of making the ground network model to realize the search for the shortest route of the model flight. When dynamically assigning routes for the aircraft, the flight order is optimized through sliding time window. The results show that, dynamic capacity is a time variable, and it can offer decision supports when a strategic or tactic flow management plan is going to be made; searching the shortest route during the evaluation can reduce the errors in the fixed taxi route evaluation, and meanwhile, it can also improve the flexibility of the model and can be used as a reference for the reform and expansion of airports.2. On the basis of summarizing the ground holding model of single airport and multiple airport and considering the fact that most of the domestic airports'runway is used for both arrivals and departures and that most of the single airport ground holding strategy models are mainly focused on the effects the arrival flights would have on the airport capacity, a single airport ground holding strategy model is established based on the capacity conversion of arrivals and departures. Through deciding the arrival priority level, this model can adjust the order of the arrival and departure flights to achieve the optimized result that conforms to the balance of departure, arrival or both departure and arrival. Considering that the current multiple airport ground holding models are making the minimum total delay loss as the sole target function which can not live up to the need of different parties and different situations, this dissertation solves the ground holding problem as a multiple target optimization problem and seeks the result by NSGA-II algorithm. The several solution plans that can satisfy the restraints can offer the basis for the coordination and decision-making of every party. In the end, the national flight plan is taken as an actual example. Using the minimum total delay, highest on-time ratio and the least number of adjusted flights separately as the target functions, the accuracy and effectiveness of the model is testified.3. By combining air route holding, ground holding and diversion, the rerouting strategy under uncertain weather conditions is established. Compared with the presently available rerouting model, the new model enhances the punctuality of flights and the usability of airspace: it uses Markov maximum displacement probability theory to decide the coming uncertain weather; by utilizing A* arithmetic in artificial intelligence, it provides a solution to the shortest route after rerouting, and offers simulation validation based on the actual flight plan.4. The dissertation summarizes the research on the flexible usage of the airspace and the airspace classification. Combined with the actual situation in China, it offers suggestions on the airspace flexible usage method and evaluation index, airspace classification and airspace dynamic management mechanism. Furthermore, it supplies an initial plan for the airspace operation management simulation and evaluation system and describes the organization of the system and the functions of each sub-system.5. To apply the theory into practice, the author takes part in the designing and development of capacity evaluation system and regional flow management system. The dissertation introduces the development situation and functions of each sub-system of the"capacity evaluation system"and"central-south region flow management system". The capacity evaluation system has been applied to 12 busy domestic airports (regions); Central-south region flow management system has been test running in Central-south ATMB of CAAC. The application of the research outcome can be used to eliminate flight congestion and delay, improve the regularity of flights and availability of the airspace, increase air traffic flow, and directly serves the construction of national air traffic flow management system.