A blended approach to predict the noise impact by air traffic operations in realistic weather conditions

As part of a more global research effort towards greener aviation, the present study focuses on the noise impact of aircraft operations around major airports. To this end, a blended approach for aircraft noise prediction is developed, which consists of combining a widely used semi-empirical method (Integrated Noise Model, INM) with a physics-based simulation technique (Ray Tracing, RT). More precisely, the INM method is enhanced with a RT-based noise attenuation module, whose role is to restitute the transmission losses entailed by all atmospheric effects onto the acoustic waves propagating from the (aircraft) source to the (ground) observers. This blended computational approach allows simulating the ground noise impact of aircraft operations whilst accounting for the non-trivial propagation effects stemming from realistic (e.g., heterogeneous) atmospheres, all that being performed with a good accuracy and at a reasonable CPU cost. In that regard, the approach proves more accurate than the standard, popular method it stems from (INM), whilst incurring less computational cost than the more advanced technique it partly relies upon (RT). These capacities of the approach are demonstrated through representative aircraft operations around the Hong Kong International Airport; Involving either one or multiple flights along with atmospheres of increasing complexity, these simulations showcase the effectiveness of the here-proposed approach to tackle realistic problems of noise impact by air traffic.