The Looming Crisis in Air Traffic Capacity – Can Vortex Dynamics Help?
Lorenz G. Straub Award Recipient:
Mariano Ignacio Cantero, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Técnicas, Instituto Balseiro, Río Negro, Argentina
2007 Award-Winning Ph.D. Thesis: Modeling and Large Scale Simulation of Thermohaline and Particulate Density Currents
Program
3:00 p.m. Refreshments
3:30 Welcome – Straub Award Presentation
3:40 Recipient Remarks – Dr. Mariano Ignacio Cantero, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Técnicas, Instituto Balseiro, Río Negro, Argentina
3:50 Keynote Presentation – The Looming Crisis in Air Traffic Capacity: Can Vortex Dynamics Help? – Dr. Fazle Hussain, Cullen Distinguished Professor and Director, Institute of Fluid Dynamics and Turbulence, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Houston
4:50 Question and Answer
5:00 p.m. Adjourn
Fazle Hussain,
Cullen Distinguished Professor and Director,
Institute of Fluid Dynamics and Turbulence,
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Houston
The air traffic capacity is projected to be tripled by 2025, demanding a tripling of runways at major airports of the world. Safe aircraft separation to avoid wake hazard is not only already a challenge during takeoffs and landings, but will become a major problem also during cruise in the crowded skies. We propose a method of breaking up the trailing vortices and inducing their rapid decay so that separation between aircraft can be significantly reduced. We study via direct numerical simulation the evolution of a vortex column embedded in fine-scale turbulence, and then explore three potential mechanisms for core perturbation growth:
- Centrifugal instability due to vortex circulation overshoot,
- Kelvin wave growth due to resonance with the external turbulence, and
- Transient growth of perturbations in the normal-mode stable vortex.
We show that transient growth of bending waves can produce orders of magnitude growth in core turbulence and hence possible breakup of trailing vortices – particularly at Reynolds numbers relevant to aircraft.