Developing a Cost-Effective Assessment Method for Noise Impacts at Non-Towered Airports: A Case Study at Purdue University

Abstract

Aircraft noise is considered as one of the environmental impacts that most adversely affects airport development. Aircraft noise estimation tools such as the Aviation Environmental Design Tool (AEDT) are widely used by airports to mitigate local concerns for airport development. Aircraft operations and fleet mix information play important roles in aircraft performance modeling for noise prediction. However, such information is difficult to obtain at almost 85% of the 3,348 National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems (NPIAS) airports, which lack full-time air traffic control facilities and personnel. Given the increasing percentage of equipped automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) aircraft in the U.S. national airspace, this paper presents a cost-effective noise estimation approach for non-towered general aviation (GA) airports. Instead of deploying physical sound meters or relying on the local air traffic control facilities, the authors collected aircraft positional data and fleet mix information based on ADS-B broadcasts. Advanced aircraft performance model parameters are constructed using four-dimensional aircraft position and a kinematic point-mass model. Aircraft-specific noise levels are interpolated based on the EUROCONTROL Aircraft Noise and Performance (ANP) database. To obtain the final noise level, two adjustments are applied to the interpolated noise values. The test results show the proposed approach can help non-towered airports predict the noise impact on any selected locations near the airport cost-effectively. Recommendations and opportunities for future investigation are also included.