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Wing trailing vortex paths in formation flight
Includes bibliographical references.
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| Main Author: | |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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Department of Mechanical Engineering
2015
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| _version_ | 1867613332046872576 |
|---|---|
| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author | Tipping-Woods, William P |
| author2 | Redelinghuys, Christiaan |
| author_browse | Redelinghuys, Christiaan Tipping-Woods, William P |
| author_facet | Redelinghuys, Christiaan Tipping-Woods, William P |
| author_sort | Tipping-Woods, William P |
| collection | Thesis |
| description | Includes bibliographical references. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/13228 |
| institution | University of Cape Town (South Africa) |
| language | eng |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:34:27.383Z |
| license_str | Not specified — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| publishDate | 2015 |
| publishDateRange | 2015 |
| publishDateSort | 2015 |
| publisher | Department of Mechanical Engineering |
| publisherStr | Department of Mechanical Engineering |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| spelling | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/13228 Wing trailing vortex paths in formation flight Tipping-Woods, William P Redelinghuys, Christiaan Mechanical Engineering Includes bibliographical references. Formation flight has been shown to reduce the induced drag for a formation of aircraft. The mechanism by which this is achieved is caused by the wake velocity field of the aircraft. This field is dominated by wing-tip trailing vortices. The paths of these vortices become too complex for rigid wake models downstream of the second aircraft in the formation. To tackle this problem, a combined vortex lattice and vortex filament numerical model was developed. For each simulation the vortex lattice model determined the lift distribution which was applied to the vortex filament model. The vortex filament model used the Burnaham-Hallock vortex profile with a core size of 5% of the wing span to eliminate numerical instabilities. Individual components of the model were verified successfully against literature and the overall approach was validated against wind tunnel data. The wind tunnel data was extracted from apparatus designed and build as part of this study. The apparatus consisted of two NACA 0012 rectangular planform wings mounted in various formation positions and a tuft grid placed downstream of the wings to visualise the vortex paths. Test were performed with both wings at 8◦ angle of attack. Span-wise wing-tip overlap distances were set at 38%, 10%, 0% and -10% of the span, where 0% implies wing-tip alignment and a positive value indicates a wing-tip overlap. Vertical separations were set at -3%, 0% and 3% of the span for each span-wise wing-tip overlap condition apart from 38% which was only tested at 0 vertical separation. The formation outboard vortex paths were predicted well within the 3% span accuracy of the tuft grid. The predictions of the paths of the formation inboard vortices, however were less accurate. The errors were attributed to a combination of bias errors in the experimental apparatus as well as the pseudo-viscous effects of the Burnham-Hallock vortex profile. 2015-07-01T08:57:10Z 2015-07-01T08:57:10Z 2014 Master Thesis Masters MSc http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13228 eng application/pdf Department of Mechanical Engineering Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment University of Cape Town |
| spellingShingle | Mechanical Engineering Tipping-Woods, William P Wing trailing vortex paths in formation flight |
| thesis_degree_str | Master's |
| title | Wing trailing vortex paths in formation flight |
| title_full | Wing trailing vortex paths in formation flight |
| title_fullStr | Wing trailing vortex paths in formation flight |
| title_full_unstemmed | Wing trailing vortex paths in formation flight |
| title_short | Wing trailing vortex paths in formation flight |
| title_sort | wing trailing vortex paths in formation flight |
| topic | Mechanical Engineering |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13228 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT tippingwoodswilliamp wingtrailingvortexpathsinformationflight |