Navigation aid method based on meteorological conditions

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9715832-B2
Application number	US-201614992929-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jan 11, 2016
Priority date	Jan 16, 2015
Publication date	Jul 25, 2017
Grant date	Jul 25, 2017

Abstract

A navigation aid method for an aircraft flying a reference trajectory between a point of departure and a point of arrival subject to a field of wind vectors comprises: decomposing the reference trajectory into a plurality of discrete waypoints Pi, loading meteorological data comprising the field of wind vectors, iterating the following steps N times, to generate an improved trajectory: for each waypoint Pi named current point, determining a reference plane, determining an orthonormal reference frame, determining a wind curl ((∇ W) Pi ), determining a sign of the projection of the wind curl on axis zi ((∇ W) zi Pi ), determining a direction of displacement from the current point Pi to a new current waypoint Pi′, determining a line of displacement, determining a displacement distance, determining the new current waypoint, determining a new trajectory, assigning the new waypoints Pi′ determined in the preceding iteration to the waypoints Pi for the next iteration.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. An aircraft navigation aid method for determining an improved trajectory, executed by a flight management system, said aircraft flying a reference trajectory between a point of departure and a point of arrival subject to a field of wind vectors, the method comprising the steps of:
decomposing with the flight management system the reference trajectory into a plurality of discrete waypoints Pi indexed i, i varying from 1 to n−1, the point of departure corresponding to an index 0 and the point of arrival to an index n,
loading meteorological data into the flight management system comprising the field of wind vectors in an area of predetermined dimensions including the reference trajectory,
iterating with the flight management system the following steps N times, so as to generate an improved trajectory:
for each waypoint Pi named current point,
determining with the flight management system a reference plane comprising the current point Pi, the point Pi−1 preceding the current point and the point Pi+1 following the current point,
determining with the flight management system an orthonormal reference frame associated with the current point such that the axis xi corresponds to the axis joining the preceding point Pi−1 and the following point P1+1, the axis yi is at right angles to xi in the reference plane and the axis zi is at right angles to xi and to yi,
determining with the flight management system a wind curl ((∇ W) Pi ) from the field of wind vectors at the current point,
determining with the flight management system a sign of the projection of the wind curl on the axis zi at the current point ((∇ W) zi ,
determining with the flight management system a direction of displacement from the current point Pi to a new current waypoint Pi′ contained in the reference plane, the direction being chosen from left, right relative to the reference trajectory, said direction being a function of said sign, said new current point Pi′ making it possible to better take account of the meteorological data,
determining with the flight management system a line of displacement from the current point Pi to a new current waypoint Pi′ as a function of an operational criterion,
determining with the flight management system a displacement distance from the current point Pi to the new current waypoint Pi′,
determining with the flight management system the new current waypoint Pi′ corresponding to a displacement from the current point Pi, according to the line of displacement, the displacement distance and the direction of displacement determined in the preceding steps, the direction of displacement being chosen from left, right relative to the reference trajectory and being based on the sign of the projection of the wind curl on the axis zi at the current point ((∇ W) zi ,

determining with the flight management system a new trajectory from said new current points Pi′, the point of departure and the point of arrival remaining unchanged,
assigning with the flight management system the new waypoints Pi′ determined in the preceding iteration and to the waypoints Pi for the next iteration, displaying the improved trajectory to a pilot on a display.

2. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the reference trajectory is a lateral trajectory situated in a horizontal plane xy, the reference plane and the axis z being then common to all the waypoints Pi.

3. The method according to claim 1 , wherein a respectively positive or negative value of said sign corresponds to a direction of displacement respectively to the right or to the left.

4. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the line of displacement from the current point Pi corresponds to the line yi.

5. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the step of determination of the displacement distance for each current point consists in loading a predefined distance that is identical for all the waypoints Pi.

6. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the step of determination of the displacement distance for each current point comprises the sub steps of:
computing, for each waypoint Pi, a norm of a vector according to the line of displacement from the projection of the airspeed of the aircraft along the line xi ((TAS H ) Pi ), from said projection along zi of the wind curl at the current point Pi ((∇ W) zi Pi ), and from a distance between the point preceding the current point P i−1 and the point following the current point P i+1 ,
loading a predefined parameter
determining the displacement distance for each waypoint Pi as the product of the predefined parameter and said norm.

7. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the line of displacement from the current point corresponds to the vector sum of three components respectively exhibiting a line and a norm,
a first and a second component respectively exhibiting a line corresponding to the line (u 1i ) passing through the waypoint Pi and the preceding point P i−1 , and a line (u 2i ) passing through the waypoint Pi and the following point P i+1 ,
a third component exhibiting a line yi,

said first and second components corresponding to a return force respectively towards the preceding waypoint P i−1 and the following waypoint P i+1 making it possible to limit a length of the new trajectory, the third component making it possible to increase the impact of the wind on the new trajectory.

8. The method according to claim 7 , wherein the first and second norms of the first and second components are equal to 1, and wherein the third norm is determined, for each waypoint Pi, from the projection of the airspeed of the aircraft on the axis xi ((TAS H ) Pi ), from said projection on zi of the wind curl at the current point Pi ((∇ W) zi Pi ) and from a distance between the preceding waypoint P i−1 and the waypoint P i+1 following the waypoint Pi.

9. The method according to claim 8 , in which the third norm is computed by the formula:
| F 3 i |=|−1/( TAS H ) Pi ×(∇ W ) zi Pi ×Di/ 2|

with:
i: index of the current point
(TAS H ) Pi : Projection of the airspeed of the aircraft on xi
(∇ W) zi Pi : projection on zi of the wind curl at the current point Pi
Di: distance between P i−1 and P i+1 .

10. The method according to claim 7 , wherein the step of determination of the displacement distance for each current point consists of loading a predefined distance that is identical for all the waypoints Pi.

11. The method according to claim 7 , wherein the step of determination of the displacement distance for each current point comprises the sub steps of:
loading a predefined parameter,
determining the displacement distance for each waypoint Pi as the product of the predefined parameter and of the norm of the line of displacement computed by vector sum of the three components.

12. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising a step consisting of defining the number N of iterations.

13. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising a step of computation of a smoothed trajectory from the improved trajectory.

14. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising a step consisting of subdividing the improved trajectory into individual trajectory segments compatible with the ARINC424 standard.

15. A flight management system comprising non-transitory code instructions for determining an improved trajectory of an aircraft flying a reference trajectory between a point of departure and a point of arrival subject to a field of wind vectors, the flight management system configured to:
decompose the reference trajectory into a plurality of discrete waypoints P

Assignees

• Thales Sa

Inventors

• Pierre Christophe
• Auletto Rémy
• Dacre-Wright Benoit

Classifications

• G08G5/0034

  Physics · mapped topic

• G01W1/02

  Instruments for indicating weather conditions by measuring two or more variables, e.g. humidity, pressure, temperature, cloud cover or wind speed (G01W1/10 takes precedence) · CPC title

• G08G5/0039 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic

• G08G5/0052

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F7/724

  Finite field arithmetic (for error detection or correction in general H03M13/00, in computers G06F11/10) · CPC title