Method for evaluating the landing aircraft sequence under disturbed conditions with the use of Petri nets

Abstract

ABSTRACTOne of the important tasks that air traffic management services are faced with today is the task of maximising airport capacity. This can be achieved at the tactical level through proper organisation of air traffic around an airport. In recent years, many methods and algorithms for scheduling aircraft landings have been developed; they take into account various optimisation goals. The aim of this paper was to create a method that would allow one to evaluate landing aircraft sequences resulting from these control algorithms, especially in the presence of random disturbances. This method involves modelling the landing aircraft sequence by using Petri nets. The model and the computer tool that have been developed make it possible to take into account different kinds of disturbances and examine the effectiveness of various control strategies under these conditions. This paper presents two experiments that test disturbances with different characteristics and of different intensities. It has been shown that small but more frequent disturbances lead to the worsening of evaluation scores for a given sequence to a lesser extent than rare but larger disturbances. This is particularly important for control algorithms in which the focus is on high aircraft density. If the type of particular disturbances is properly assessed, then it will be possible to assist the decision-maker (air traffic controller) by providing him/her with quantitative evaluations of possible solutions.