English:
Wake Vortex Study at
Wallops Island
The
air flow
from the
wing
of this
agricultural plane
is made visible by a technique that uses colored smoke rising from the ground. The swirl at the wingtip traces the aircraft's
wake vortex
, which exerts a powerful influence on the flow field behind the plane. Because of wake vortex, the
Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA) requires aircraft to maintain set distances behind each other when they land. A joint
NASA
-FAA program aimed at boosting
airport
capacity, however, is aimed at determining conditions under which
planes
may fly closer together. NASA researchers are studying wake vortex with a variety of tools, from
supercomputers
, to
wind tunnels
, to actual flight tests in research aircraft. Their goal is to fully understand the phenomenon, then use that knowledge to create an automated system that could predict changing wake vortex conditions at airports.
Pilots
already know, for example, that they have to worry less about wake vortex in rough weather because windy conditions cause them to dissipate more rapidly.