WEMSgen: a real-time weather modelling library for on-board trajectory optimisation and planning

Abstract

WEMSgen is a stand-alone application devel- oped within the Clean Sky FASTOP (Fast Opti- miser for continuous descent approaches) project that is capable to load weather data in standard GRIB (General Regularly-distributed Information in Binary form) files and generate piece-wise polynomial fitting functions that can be used in a latter stage in trajectory planning and/or optimisation algorithms. Assuming a known lateral flight route, meteorological input data (temperature, pressure and wind field) is fitted into cubic B-splines as a function of the aircraft altitude and its distance to the runway threshold. WEMSgen can be queried in real-time by any process that needs weather data. Thus, besides being used for trajec- tory planning or optimisation algorithms, it also can feed aircraft simulation or visualisation applications, among other. WEMSgen has been successfully used and validated in a flight simulation experiment using the Generic Research Aircraft Cockpit Environment (GRACE) at the National Aerospace Laboratory of The Netherlands (NLR)