The surface wind gust regime and aircraft operations at Sydney Airport.

Richard Manasseh *1
Jason H. Middleton *2
School of Mathematics, University of New South Wales
Sydney, Australia

*1 Current Affiliation: Advanced Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
CSIRO BCE, PO Box 56, Highett, VIC 3190, Melbourne, Australia.
*2 Also: Department of Aviation, University of New South Wales.

Note: This is the preprint version, as orignally submitted, and is the version prior to review and acceptance by the journal. The final, accepted version is published by Elsevier Science Ltd and is expected to appear in 1998. For futher details contact Richard Manasseh.

Abstract:

Surface wind gusts are studied by analyses of the properties of gust distributions. The data come from a set of anemometers that acquires data continuously at Sydney Airport. Probabilistic techniques are developed to identify landing and take-off directions under the greatest risk of along- and cross-track gusts. At Sydney Airport, along-track gusts are found to be more severe than cross-track gusts, and operations in runway direction 07 are found to pose the greatest risk. Conditions of strong synoptically-generated wind are considered as well as days on which thunderstorms occurred. The techniques developed should be applicable to data acquired from a ground-level anemometer network at any airport.

Tue Feb 28 18:20:49 EST 1995