Aircraft loading optimization

The loading of cargo aircraft is more critical in terms of total weight and center of gravity. At the moment, loadmasters are executing the loading manually in a way that can result some economical and time loss. This research is based on loading optimization of an A310-304F cargo aircraft. The main goal is to eliminate the human factor on loading, making it safer and more economic with the help of computers. The goal of this research is to load as much freight as possible in aircraft while balancing the load in order to minimize fuel consumption during flight. The pre-used loading data used in this work has be obtained from an actual freighter aircraft operating for Turkish Airlines. A heuristic algorithm is designed for loading problem and C++ computer code is used to solve the problem. The program decides which containers in which position will be loaded and which to leave on the ground. Former manual loading examples by the loadmasters are solved and loaded by the computer to test the reliability of the program and a comparison is done between both results. It is seen that the computer program results are much more ideal and computer loading will be safer, stable and economical. Keywords: Aircraft, freight, cargo, loading, optimization, center of gravity, mass and balance, heuristic