Simulation and performance assessment of airport landing lighting

Airport landing lighting is used to guide aircraft to an airport for safe landing during day or night operations and in any type of weather. It is crucial therefore that the landing lighting performs according to the standards set out by the aviation industry. Researchers at Queen's University Belfast have developed a technique for assessing the performance of landing lighting luminaires whilst in service. However, because of the necessity to keep airport operations functioning as efficiently as possible, it is difficult to test and validate this system on a real landing lighting system. In this paper, we present a technique for testing this system by developing a virtual landing lighting pattern using a computer generated 3D model. This virtual lighting pattern can be used to test and validate the proposed assessment system and subsequently refine the technique before real field trials begin. In this paper we describe the development of the virtual model and compare its performance to an actual lighting pattern, and show that it is possible to accurately simulate lighting patterns. This work has relevance to a range of applications where lighting design and performance are important considerations.