| Summary: | NOₓ emissions represent the largest source of air quality impacts attributed to aircraft. The largest part of these impacts are due to emissions during cruise where 90% of fuel burn occurs. NOₓ emissions cause an increase of surface PM2.5 and O3 concentrations that adversely affect human health. This public health consideration has motivated the International Civil Aviation (ICAO) Committe on Aviation and Environment Protection (CAEP) to set standards aimed at constraining NOₓ emissions. While the current Landing and Takeoff (LTO) regulation is designed to control emissions levels in the vicinity of the airport, emissions above 3,000 ft are not regulated yet. The LTO regulation is limited in its ability to constrain cruise NOₓ emissions. This observation motivated the investigation of new NOₓ metric systems focusing on cruise emissions. In this thesis, several NOₓ metrics candidates were defined. The ability of metrics to represent of cruise emissions was assessed quantitatively by computing the Pearson correlation coefficient between the candidate metrics and estimates of emissions from fleets of aircraft flying on real world routes computed using an aircraft emission inventory code. Based on correlation criteria, this thesis demonstrates that a new NOₓ regulation defined as a weighted sum of emissions indices at several intermediate static thrust points is able to better constrain cruise emissions than the current LTO regulation. Additionally, this new regulation will not necessitate a significant change in the emissions certification process. The focus of this thesis was to establish the metric value —quantity to be measured— within the regulation. The limit levels that are to be set on the metric value remain to be determined in order to comprehensively define the cruise NOₓ regulation.
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