Affiliations: School of Aerospace Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author: José E. Bernardo, Research Engineer II, Aerospace Engineering, 275 Ferst Dr. Atlanta, GA 30332-0150, USA. E-mail: [email protected].
Abstract: Aviation operations are projected to increase, potentially resulting in increased environmental impacts with respect to fuel burn, NOx emissions, and community noise. A number of programs are involved in identifying technological advances required to mitigate these environmental impacts. These technologies must be analyzed at the vehicle-level, but also at the fleet-level to predict the expected impact in the face of increasing operations. Airport community noise is particularly difficult to model due to the spatial and temporal nature of noise, resulting in a reduced understanding of noise exposure contributions by certain aircraft types. The objective of this research is to analyze the contribution to the total noise exposure at several airport types. By using a generic framework to intelligently reduce aircraft and airport diversity, contributions of aircraft types at different airport types can be reported. Results include spatial analysis of noise contributions, demonstrating that the largest contributors affect the lateral regions of a noise contour, while a greater number of vehicle classes impact the noise near the ground track. Results demonstrate that there is some variation in the greatest contributors by airport type between the Regional Jet, Small Single-Aisle, Large Single-Aisle, and Small Twin-Aisle classes. Conversely, the Large Twin-Aisle and the Very Large Aircraft generally contribute little to total airport noise exposure.
