A new vortex sheet model for simulating aircraft wake vortex evolution

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 evolu tion,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.