Identification of optimal rendezvous and separation areas for formation flight under consideration of wind.

Abstract

The paper analyzes the influence of wind on the optimal rendezvous and separation points of a two-aircraft aerodynamic formation flight. For a set of origin and destination airports the optimal formation routing is determined for each day of the year 2012 using an optimal control approach and a pattern search optimization to maximize the benefits estimated by a surrogate model. The resulting formation geometries are recalculated to enhance the benefit estimation and subsequently compared to the cases with fixed rendezvous and separation locations. It is shown, that wind effects account for a large variability of the achievable benefits as well as of the geographic location of the optimal rendezvous and separation points. A fixation of these locations leads to a significant reduction of the achievable benefits.