Development of a Fast Method to Analyze Patterns in Airport Noise

Traditional airport noise modeling is limited in its ability to analyze large quantities of flight tracks due to high computation time. As a result, yearly noise reports are often limited to modeling flights from a single “representative day,” which lacks detail arising from the natural dispersion of flight tracks and variety in airport operations occurring throughout an entire year of operations. A framework for processing actual flight data and applying an existing, fast noise approximation is presented. Tens of thousands of flights can be analyzed in a matter of hours, allowing for a data-comprehensive approach to calculating noise metrics. Method results are cross-validated against the Aviation Environmental Design Tool (AEDT) on a single-event basis and an existing aggregate result on a multi-event basis. Results for a variety of metrics are presented based on data sourced from Boston Logan International Airport in 2016. Day-Night-Level (DNL) is calculated on a yearly, daily, and hourly basis, highlighting the variability in noise patterns depending on evolving airport runway configuration. N60 is calculated as a supplemental metric on a daily basis.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2021

Author dc:creator

• Jansson, Madeleine

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Hansman, R. John Jr.

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
• Copyright MIT

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/140044

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/140044