Wake of Transport Flying Wings

Flying wings are among the most promising concepts regarding the ever-increasing air traffic demand. They could help in improving economic efficiency and would be environmentally friendly, both in terms of emissions and noise. This paper addresses the problem of trailing vortices shed from the flying wing, arranged as a pair of counter-rotating vortex tubes as in conventional aircraft. The turbulence produced by the wake obliges airports to maintain certain time and distance separation between aircraft in takeoff and landing maneuvers, imposing a limit on the number of movements per runway. With the help of a simple model, the present paper provides preliminary estimations of circulation, core size, induced velocities, and other relevant features of the wake of transport flying wings and shows that it is less hazardous than that of conventional aircraft of similar size.