A new vortex sheet model for simulating aircraft wake vortex evolution

Abstract A new vortex sheet model was proposed for simulating aircraft wake vortex evolution. Rather than beginning with a pair of counter-rotating cylindrical vortices as in the traditional models, a lift-drag method is used to initialize a vortex sheet so that the roll-up phase is taken into account. The results of this model report a better approximation to a real situation when compared to the measurement data. The roll-up induced structures are proved to influence the far-field decay. On one hand, they lead to an early decay in the diffusion phase. On the other hand, the growth of linear instability such as elliptical instability is suppressed, resulting in a slower decay in the rapid decay phase. This work provides a simple and practicable model for simulating wake vortex evolution, which combines the roll-up process and the far-field phase in simulation. It is also proved that the roll-up phase should not be ignored when simulating the far-field evolution of an aircraft wake vortex pair, which indicates the necessity of this new model.