TABLE OF CONTENTS Wake vortex encounters are critical situations that may result in flight conditions dominantly affecting the aircraft reaction during safety-critical flight phases. Optimization of air traffic distribution and volume in the vicinity of airports, particularly under a mix of light, medium, and heavy aircraft, calls for better understanding of the basic physics underlying this phenomenon.4 ,64 For this purpose, validated models for aerodynamic flow field characteristics and aircraft wake vortex encounter reaction models are indispensable.
Aerodynamic interaction models (AIM) are an indispensable part of flight mechanic simulation models concerned with wake vortex encounter investigations, for example, simulator studies or encounter risk assessment. Two typical AIMs are the strip method and the lifting surface method.65 ,66 Both can be adapted to various aircraft configurations and compute the wake vortex flow-field-induced additional forces and moments that are added to the forces and moments computed by the basic aircraft aero model. For reliable simulation results, the quality of the AIM model is of prime importance. Until now, quality has often been proven by comparing model forces and moments to static wind tunnel measurements, in which the follower aircraft is set to distinct positions behind a wake-generating configuration.
Within the 5th European framework technology project S-WAKE,66 one objective was to validate the AIMs using data from full-scale flight tests, which were carried out using three aircraft: ATTAS from DLR, a Do-128 of the Technical University of Braunschweig, and a Cessna Citation from NLR, the...
