26TH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF THE AERONAUTICAL SCIENCES

26TH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF THE AERONAUTICAL SCIENCES 1 Abstract The European air transport system, presently close to its limit, is facing the challenge of a continuously growing demand with a wish of sustainable and economically viable development. The air transport industry is aware that it needs in particular to significantly reduce its environmental impact. In this context, the Infrastructure for Evaluating Air Transport Systems (IESTA) aims to gather the multidisciplinary knowledge of the aeronautical research in physical modelling guarantying the ability of the evaluation platform to handle innovative concepts. Complementary to real time simulators with operator in the loop, IESTA intents to go further than existing evaluation platforms mainly based on existing software limited to current traffic modelling and simulation. The first application of IESTA is focused on the environmental (acoustic and chemical) impact of air traffic surrounding airports. 1 Introduction The Advisory Council for Aeronautics Research in Europe (ACARE) has strongly warned the aeronautical community that the European Air Transport System (ATS), presently close to its limit, is facing the challenge of a continuously growing demand with a wish of sustainable and economically viable development [1]. Moreover, the impact of the air transport on our environment becomes a more pressing issue with global warming taking on increased importance in addition to noise and gaseous emissions around airports. Although air transport can be seen as a minor contributor (currently at a global scale, about 3% of CO2 emissions would derive from aircraft [1]), the continuously growing air traffic demand implies anyway a reduction of the air transport environmentalair transport evaluation platforms air traffic physical modelling noise aircraft emissions chemical species related noise