A Bi-layer Coordinated Optimization Scheduling Method of Runway and Taxiway for Arriving and Departing Flights in Airfield Area

The runway and taxiway scheduling of large hub airports has not yet formed a cascade operation mode, leading to the inability to achieve coordinated planning and reasonable scheduling of cross-domain and heterogeneous flight flows under limited capacity of airports. This paper studies a bi-layer coordinated optimization scheduling method of runway and taxiway for arriving and departing flights in the airfield area. In the runway scheduling stage, a joint arriving and departing scheduling model of multi runways considering the cost of runway changing is proposed, which quantifies and minimizes the cost of unimpeded taxiing time for flights that change runways, and suppresses the extra taxiing time generated as far as possible while ensuring the minimum cumulative delays on runways. In the taxiway scheduling stage, a surface taxiing scheduling model is developed by minimizing the deviation between the total cumulative taxiing time of flights and the expected departure time of runway scheduling, which is used to plan the timing and sorting of arriving and departing flights at each metering point. Finally, a closed-loop mechanism of feedback-revision is adopted to prevent the mismatch in bi-layer coordinated optimization scheduling. Simulation and verification are conducted by taking Shuangliu International Airport and Tianfu International Airport in Chengdu as scenarios. The results show that runway delay time of single aircraft is reduced by 16.9 s and the cumulative flight taxiing time is reduced by 14.27% on average after the first iteration comparing to the first-come-first-served strategy, and that a matching scheduling plan can be found within 1.35 iterations on average if the closed-loop mechanism of feedback-revision is adopted. Meanwhile, the performance of 3 different types of bi-layer coordinated optimization scheduling strategies is analyzed. The method proposed in this paper is helpful to promote the technology system of comprehensive coordinated management for arrival, departure and surface, and to the formation of refined control capabilities of the airfield traffic flows with a digitally-drive core.