Uncertainty quantification of noise abatement flight procedures

Abstract

Noise abatement flight procedures are usually designed under the assumption that the resulting flight path will be executed by the pilot with very high accuracy. A previous investigation, however, has shown that even though the flight path is accurately controlled there still is a significant spread in the measured noise metric on the ground. The statistical values obtained in these flight tests are used in this paper to investigate the influence of uncertainty in the position, velocity and wind. The results indicate that the velocity along the flight path plays a dominant role in the resulting statistical properties of the noise metric on the ground. Furthermore it is shown that uncertainty in the velocity has a significant impact on benefit obtained by noise abatement flight procedures. This indicates the need to include uncertainty into the optimisation process. The results of the uncertainty quantification could also be used to compare different flight procedures in terms of robustness.