Wind and Turbulence Distributed Sensing for Advanced Air Mobility

Advanced Exploration of Reliable Operation at Low Altitudes: Meteorology, Simulation, and Technology (AERoCAST) is a NASA Convergent Aeronautics Solutions (CAS) project that addresses the effects and impacts of wind and turbulence (W&T) on Advanced Air Mobility (AAM). Turbulence poses significant challenges because it is difficult to measure and substantially impacts aviation. It is a considerable concern as it can cause in-flight injuries, increase costs due to re-routing and delays, lead to airframe wear, and affect ride quality. AAM aircraft will likely encounter more severe turbulence than commercial airplanes because of building wakes and low-altitude atmospheric conditions. This paper aims to characterize turbulence in urban environments by using AAM aircraft as distributed sensors to create W&T maps. A CFD simulation of San Francisco provides a comprehensive wind data database to simulate urban wind conditions. Setting waypoints in San Francisco and connecting them with Explicit Guidance creates nominal waypoint-based trajectories. As the simulated aircraft follow these trajectories, they take sonic anemometer measurements, which generate maps of wind velocity, angle of attack, turbulence intensity, turbulent kinetic energy, and eddy dissipation rate.