Vertically curved runways for reducing airport environmental impact and increasing aircraft productivity

Elham, A. and Curran, R. (2015) Vertically curved runways for reducing airport environmental impact and increasing aircraft productivity. Journal of Aircraft, 52 (5), 1681-1691. (doi:10.2514/1.C033052).

Abstract

This paper presents the concept and advantages of vertically curved runways for reducing the air pollution in the vicinity of airports, while also increasing the productivity of passenger aircraft. The shape of a curved runway was optimize to minimize the produced CO2 during an aircraft takeoff and to maximize the aircraft takeoff weight for a given runway horizontal length. A method for aircraft takeoff simulation is presented and validated using actual data of a passenger aircraft. Using that method, a series of single-objective as well as multi-objective optimizations was performed to find the optimum runway shape for different objectives: minimizing the produced CO2 during takeoff, maximizing the aircraft takeoff weight, and minimizing the runway construction cost, while achieving the first two objectives. The results of the optimizations showed that, for a Boeing 747-400 class aircraft, about 250 kg reduction in the produced CO2 during a takeoff can be achieved using a curved runway with the height of 60 m and the length of 3 km. On the other hand, the range of a similar aircraft can be increased by 2500 km using a curved runway with the same height and length comparing to a flat runway with the same horizontal length.

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