A probabilistic-based analysis for wind distribution determination of a runway

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this study is to describe precisely the wind speed regime and characteristics of a runway of an International Airport, the north-western part of Turkey. Design methodology approach Three different probability distributions, namely, Inverse Gaussian (IG), widely used two-parameter Weibull and Rayleigh distributions in the literature, are used to represent wind regime and characteristics of the runway. The parameters of each distribution are estimated by the pattern search (PS)-based heuristic algorithm. The results are compared with the other three methods-based numerical computation, including maximum-likelihood method, moment method (MoM) and power density method, respectively. To evaluate the fitting performance of the proposed method, several statistical goodness tests including the mostly used root mean square error (RMSE) and chi-squared (X2) are conducted. Findings In the light of the statistical goodness tests, the results of the IG-based PS attain better performance than the classical Weibull and Rayleigh functions. Both the RMSE and X2 values achieved by the IG-based PS method lower than that of Weibull and Rayleigh distributions. It exhibits a better fitting performance with 0.0074 for RMSE and 0.58 × 10−4 for X2 for probability density function (PDF) in 2012 and with RMSE of 0.0084 and X2 of 0.74 × 10−4 for PDF in 2013. As regard the cumulative density function of the measured wind data, the best results are found to be Weibull-based PS with RMSE of 0.0175 and X2 of 3.25 × 10−4 in 2012. However, Weibull-based MoM shows more excellent ability in 2013, with RMSE of 0.0166 and X2 of 2.94 × 10−4. Consequently, it is considered that the results of this study confirm that IG-based PS with the lowest error value can a good choice to model more accurately and characterize the wind speed profile of the airport. Practical implications This paper presents a realistic point of view regarding the wind regime and characteristics of an airport. This study may cast the light on researchers, policymakers, policy analysts and airport designers intending to investigate the wind profile of a runway at the airport in the world and also provide a significant pathway on how to determine the wind distribution of the runway. Originality value Instead of the well-known Weibull distribution for the representing of wind distribution in the literature, in this paper, IG distribution is used. Furthermore, the suitability of IG to represent the wind distribution is validated when compared with two-parameter Weibull and Rayleigh distributions. Besides, the performance and efficiency of PS have been evaluated by comparing it with other methods.