Issue |
J. Space Weather Space Clim.
Volume 5, 2015
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A17 | |
Number of page(s) | 6 | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/swsc/2015014 | |
Published online | 30 June 2015 |
Research Article
Economic impact and effectiveness of radiation protection measures in aviation during a ground level enhancement
1
German Aerospace Center, Institute of Aerospace Medicine, Linder Höhe, 51147
Cologne, Germany
2
German Aerospace Center, Institute of Propulsion Technology, Linder Höhe, 51147
Cologne, Germany
* Corresponding author: Daniel.Matthiae@dlr.de
Received:
12
November
2014
Accepted:
8
May
2015
In addition to the omnipresent irradiation from galactic cosmic rays (GCR) and their secondary products, passengers and aircraft crew may be exposed to radiation from solar cosmic rays during ground level enhancements (GLE). In general, lowering the flight altitude and changing the flight route to lower latitudes are procedures applicable to immediately reduce the radiation exposure at aviation altitudes. In practice, however, taking such action necessarily leads to modifications in the flight plan and the consequential, additional fuel consumption constrains the mitigating measures.
In this work we investigate in a case study of the ground level event of December 13th 2006 how potential mitigation procedures affect the total radiation exposure during a transatlantic flight from Seattle to Cologne taking into account constraints concerning fuel consumption and range.
Key words: Ground level enhancement / Solar energetic particles / Radiation protection / Aviation / Aircraft operations / Monte-Carlo simulation / Radiation exposure / Effective dose / Ambient dose equivalent
© D. Matthiä et al., Published by EDP Sciences 2015
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.