A procedure for estimating fuel burned based on actual flight track data, and drag and fuel-flow models is described. The procedure consists of estimating aircraft and wind states, lift, drag and thrust. Fuel-flow for jet aircraft is determined in terms of thrust, true airspeed and altitude as prescribed by the Base of Aircraft Data fuel-flow model. This paper provides a theoretical foundation for computing fuel-flow with most of the information derived from actual flight data. The procedure does not require an explicit model of thrust and calibrated airspeed/Mach profile which are typically needed for trajectory synthesis. To validate the fuel computation method, flight test data provided by the Federal Aviation Administration were processed. Results from this method show that fuel consumed can be estimated within 1% of the actual fuel consumed in the flight test. Next, fuel consumption was estimated with simplified lift and thrust models. Results show negligible difference with respect to the full model without simplifications. An iterative takeoff weight estimation procedure is described for estimating fuel consumption, when takeoff weight is unavailable, and for establishing fuel consumption uncertainty bounds. Finally, the suitability of using radar-based position information for fuel estimation is examined. It is shown that fuel usage could be estimated within 5.4% of the actual value using positions reported in the Airline Situation Display to Industry data with simplified models and iterative takeoff weight computation.
Fuel Burn Estimation Using Real Track Data
11th AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations Conference (ATIO) ; 2011 ; Virginia Beach, VA, United States
2011-09-19
Conference paper
No indication
English
Fuel Burn Estimation Using Real Track Data
British Library Conference Proceedings | 2011
|Fuel Burn Estimation Using Real Track Data
AIAA | 2011
|Fuel Burn Estimation Using Real Track Data
NTIS | 2011
|NTRS | 2011
|NTIS | 2011
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