Impact of Cloud Encounter Mitigation Procedures on Operational and Economic Effectiveness of HLFC Aircraft

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to investigate the effect of cloud encounter mitigation procedures on operational and economic effectiveness of aircraft with hybrid laminar flow control (HLFC) based on real-world flight routes and weather data. The objective is to evaluate whether cloud mitigation procedures are an appropriate measure to maximize the expected benefit of HLFC-technology under realistic meteorological boundary conditions. A global analysis of cloud encounter on typical airline routes has been conducted based on atmospheric data provided by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. Different routing procedures have been benchmarked against each other and the most appropriate procedure for daily flight operation will be discussed. For optimizing the daily route planning of HLFC aircraft with respect to cost (direct routing with cloud Encounter and performance losses vs. re-routed flightpath) models for lateral trajectory optimization and calculation have been applied.