1 / 22 INNOVATIVE RESEARCH EUROCONTROL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRE Peter CHOROBA Eurocontrol R&D Centre/ University of ZILINA Supervisors: Vu Duong / Josef Kriz A VISION OF WAKE VORTEX RESEARCH FOR NEXT 20 YEARS 5 th USA EUROPE ATM R&D SEMINAR Budapest

2 / 22 INNOVATIVE RESEARCH EUROCONTROL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRE Content  Subject, goal and approach  Introduction to the problematic  Survey  Preliminary results  Conclusion

3 / 22 INNOVATIVE RESEARCH EUROCONTROL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRE Subject of the thesis  Comprehensive study of the wake vortex phenomena to the assessment of its incorporation to ATM for safety and capacity improvements  Theoretical study, no experiments

4 / 22 INNOVATIVE RESEARCH EUROCONTROL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRE Goal + Approach  GOAL  Knowledge of the wake vortex in Air Traffic Control (ATC)  APPROACH  Review existing literature, conduct relevant analyses, and define users’ & ops requirements  Synthesize information to determine potential for deployment in ATC

5 / 22 INNOVATIVE RESEARCH EUROCONTROL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRE Introduction - Vortex phenomena Wake vortices potentially hazardous to following aircraft, … therefore strict separation between aircraft required…

6 / 22 INNOVATIVE RESEARCH EUROCONTROL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRE Introduction - ICAO separation scheme ICAO separation scheme for single runway approaches Static (not optimal), different classification schemes are used at different airports within Europe and USA harmonization (and redefinition of sub-categories) urgently needed

7 / 22 INNOVATIVE RESEARCH EUROCONTROL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRE Introduction - Separations Arrival 4-6 NM IFR only Applied behind Heavy, Medium aircraft Departure 4-6 NM or 2-3 minutes All times Applied behind Heavy or Medium aircraft Parallel Runway 4-6 NM Treated as a single runway when separated by < 2,500 ft Single runway approachSingle runway departures Closely spaced parallel runways Thus wake vortex problem is restricting airport capacity

8 / 22 INNOVATIVE RESEARCH EUROCONTROL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRE Safety or (and?) capacity problem ?  Current separation standards are effective – no accidents world- wide for aircraft operating under IFR (only incidents)  Nevertheless, vortex encounters occur daily  Airport capacity is ultimately limited by the separation standards  For specific weather conditions even ICAO separations are not sufficient In order to increase airport capacities while at least maintaining safety levels, the knowledge of wake vortex behavior under varying meteorological conditions achieves considerable significance

9 / 22 INNOVATIVE RESEARCH EUROCONTROL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRE EC statement  “EC emphasizes the need of new operational concepts and systems that permit aircraft to operate in all weather conditions, to fly closer together at lower risk so as to allow optimal and efficient allocation of the airspace between the civil and military airspace, while limiting as far as possible the construction of new airports and runways.” (Aeronautics vision for 2020)  Airports will become the bottlenecks (White paper)

10 / 22 INNOVATIVE RESEARCH EUROCONTROL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRE European WV activities  WAKENET 2 (thematic network)  AWIATOR (vortex alleviation)  I-WAKE (“on-board” detection)  ATC-WAKE (integrated WV safety and capacity system)  S-WAKE (safety assessment)  National activities, especially in Germany (HALS-DTOP, Wirbelschleppe 1&2)  Time-based (ERC)  Russian wake vortex program (on-board prediction, SABIGO Ltd.)  …

11 / 22 INNOVATIVE RESEARCH EUROCONTROL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRE Motivation for survey  Something is missing in European R&D WV projects  Users … PILOTS, ATCOs, airports, airlines, regulation authorities  Operational survey to fill the gap, at least from Eurocontrol point of view  Attract ops people for active participation at Wakenet 2 Workshops, start to build their confidence  Wakenet USA have already users on-board

12 / 22 INNOVATIVE RESEARCH EUROCONTROL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRE Methodology  Information collection task  Interview or online survey (web survey)  Pilots from 15 European airlines  ATCOs from APP centres of European TOP 10 capacity congested airports plus 5 additional airports  Goal is to get a valuable feedback for WV research and to inform (prepare) operational community about (for) the future solutions

13 / 22 INNOVATIVE RESEARCH EUROCONTROL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRE Questions  will provide a feedback about:  current wake turbulence risk perception  way of working  knowledge of physics  knowledge of state-of-the-art technology  knowledge of special WV ATC procedures  users’ beliefs in future WV research

14 / 22 INNOVATIVE RESEARCH EUROCONTROL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRE Preliminary results (1)  Wake turbulence is more significant issue for research community - ops people are aware of the risk of the phenomena, but don’t feel like the need to talk about it  Reason ?  low level of ATCOs, PILOTS’ information about the phenomena  wake turbulence is not so severe problem in the Europe yet, as researchers used to declare

15 / 22 INNOVATIVE RESEARCH EUROCONTROL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRE Preliminary results (2)  Pilots and ATCOs get the knowledge mainly during the operation, not in the basic training  ATCOs think about the harmonization of separation standards, they believe in their conservativity but safety as well  Pilots do believe ICAO is safe (no accidents), separations are not conservative  Both want to have WV visualization

16 / 22 INNOVATIVE RESEARCH EUROCONTROL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRE Preliminary results (3)  Sometimes problem to distinguish WT and AT  Pilots are reporting, safety managers are not using  ATCOs get information about WV encounters from pilots  No scenario of WV encounter in flight simulation  Local met offices do not inform about “good or bad” weather

17 / 22 INNOVATIVE RESEARCH EUROCONTROL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRE USA vs. EUROPE  USA  41 CSPR – high priority for near term  EUROPE  only Frankfurt CSPR, single RWY operation, crossing (converging) RWYs – more complex issue, cannot be solved in near term

18 / 22 INNOVATIVE RESEARCH EUROCONTROL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRE Near term  WV ATC procedures  using state-of-the-art technology- higher benefit  less technology – may not provide same degree of benefit but may imply less development risk  SOIA, HALS DTOP, TIME BASED …  Safety assessment – necessity  Incident database (reporting, measurements)

19 / 22 INNOVATIVE RESEARCH EUROCONTROL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRE Mid term  Wakenet 2 and Wakenet USA – incident reporting improved, ground effect better understood, prediction models calibrated  WV visualization in the cockpit – provided by ground equipment  At the end of the term – testing of integrated WV safety and capacity system (proposing weather and wake based dynamic separations) ?

20 / 22 INNOVATIVE RESEARCH EUROCONTROL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRE Far term  Dynamic systems operational  Vortex alleviation (C-Wake 2, Awiator finished)  if the flight tests are successful …  wake is a result of lift – elimination is not possible, but at least reducing of the strength  Airborne detection & prediction (I-Wake 2, russian activities) – what will be the use ?  Pilots prefer to have 3D visualization over 2D

21 / 22 INNOVATIVE RESEARCH EUROCONTROL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRE Conclusion  Finish and analyze the survey  Prepare and inform ops people, build their confidence  USA vs. EUROPE R&D coordination – important to succeed  Potential solutions :  Short term – special (modified) WV ATC procedures  Mid-term – mature prediction models, dynamic WV systems  Long-term - WV alleviation, on-board detection

22 / 22 INNOVATIVE RESEARCH EUROCONTROL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRE Thank you for your attention! Questions?