Method for Accelerating the Destruction of Aircraft Wake Vortices

The wake vortices shed by large aircraft and their associated hazard to following aircraft remain an important issue in commercial aviation. Extensive research into methods for alleviating this wake vortex hazard has been continuing for many years. This paper presents results from numerical simulations detailing a potentially useful mechanism for accelerating the destruction of the aircraft vortex wake and reducing the wake vortex hazard. The term destruction is used to refer to the progressive annihilation of the wake caused by mixing of vorticity of opposite sign and the associated elimination of large coherent structures. The emphasis here is on a description of the mechanism and its connection to previous work.