Assessment of the 3D-separation of Air Traffic Flows

This paper is a continuation of [1] and [2], where two algorithms were introduced, allocating optimal separated 3D-trajectories to the main traffic flows. The reader may also refer to [3] (PhD thesis, in french) for more details. In [1], these algorithms – an A∗ algorithm for the sequential strategy, and an evolutionary algorithm for the global optimization – were tried on a toy problem, and the two strategies were compared. In [2], the algorithms were again briefly introduced and illustrated on the same toy problem, and then applied to real traffic data, using operational aircraft performances, but with only one 3D-trajectory per flow. In this paper, we present more realistic models of 3D-flows, with several trajectories per origin-destination link. The 3D-separation concept is then assessed by comparing the conflicts detected in a traffic of reference, with the conflicts detected when the aircraft belonging to the main traffic flows follow separated 3D-trajectories.