36th Aerospace Sciences Meeting Exhibit

A study has been performed on a computer code modeling an aircraft wake vortex spacing system during final approach. This code represents an intial engineering model of a system to calculate reduced approach separation criteria needed to increase airport productivity. This report evaluates model sensitivity toward various weather conditions (crosswind, crosswind variance, turbulent kinetic energy, and thermal gradient), code configurations (approach corridor option, and wake demise definition), and post-processing techniques (rounding of provided spacing values, and controller time variance).

The Symposium brought together many of the world’s experts in fluid mechanics, microfabrication and control theory to discover the synergy that can lead to real advances and perhaps find ways in which collaborative projects may proceed. The high profile meeting was attended by keynote speakers who are leaders in their fields. A key driver was the improvement in flow efficiency to reduce drag, and thereby emissions arising from transport. About 65 papers were presented.