Determination of a runway orientation is a critical task in the planning and
design of an airport. Runways usually oriented in the direction of the
prevailing winds. The best direction can be decided through proper execution
of wind analysis for designated area. In this study, wind analysis is conducted
by manual analysis and computer analysis to check the accuracy of used
software in computer analysis by comparing their results with the manual
procedure. The manual analysis represented by windrose type II while the
computer analysis represented by two software FAA Airport design and
Windrose PRO. In order to analyze the available local wind observations with
windrose II manual procedure and FAA Airport design software they must be
converted to suitable windrose statistics so that a third software should be used
. In this study WRPLOT View software is used to do this task. In this study
three case studies Aswan international airport, Al Nozha international airport
and Marsa Alam international airport were studied. These cases studies subject
to wind analysis by use of manual analysis and computer analysis. For FAA
Airport Design and WindRose PRO software there were small differences
between its results and windrose II manual analysis results. In order to verify
the optimization process in each case study, a comparison was made between
existing runways orientation and estimated optimum runways orientation. For
Aswan international airport the existing runway which has actual orientation
of 170.88/350.88 which provides 98.07% wind coverage while the optimum
runway orientation is 174/354 which provides 98.2% wind coverage. For Al
Nozha there are two existing runways which have actual orientation of
45.06/225.07 and 179.99/359.99 which provides 84.11% and 93.27% wind
coverage respectively while the optimum runway orientation is one runway
with orientation of 146/326 which provides 96.04% wind coverage. For Marsa
Alam international airport the existing runway which has actual orientation of
149.75/329.76 which provides 99.65% wind coverage while the optimum
runway orientation is 156/336 which provides 99.72% wind coverage.
Parametric analysis applied on each case study in order to studying the effect
of each controlling parameter on wind coverage. This analysis is proceed by
use of FAA Airport Design software because it allow the designer to keep the
other parameters fixed while changing one of them. These parameters are
number of runways, runway orientation, maximum allowable crosswind
component and maximum allowable tailwind component.