Fabian Danecker successfully defended his dissertation “ A Discrete-Continuous Algorithm for Globally Optimal Free Flight Trajectory Optimization“ at the Institute of Mathematics at Freie Universität Berlin on April 29, 2024. He develop a completely new approach to efficiently compute globally optimal free flight trajectories up to any desired accuracy. The method, called, DisCOptER (Discrete-Continuous Optimization for Enhanced Resolution) combines discrete and continuous optimization in a two-stage approach in such a way that the algorithm inherits the superior asymptotic convergence properties of the optimal control stage. This translates into fuel saving potentials of up to 2%. The research was funded by the Berlin Mathematics Excellence Cluster Math+ in projects AA3-3: Discrete-Continuous Shortest Path Problems in Flight Planning and TrU-4 Adaptive Methods in Free Flight Planning.
The picture shows (from left to right) Martin Weiser (supervisor), Anton Schiela (U Bayreuth, external committee member), Karin Schaller (postdoc committee member), Fabian Danecker, Ralf Borndörfer (promoter and committee head), and Christoph Schütte (committee member).
Link to free flight homepage: https://www.zib.de/research/projects/discrete-continuous-shortest-path-problems-flight-planning
Link to Math+ project AA3-3: https://mathplus.de/research-2/application-areas/aa3-next-generation-networks/aa3-3/
Link to Math+ project TrU-4: https://mathplus.de/transfer/tru-4/
