Aircraft Vortex Wake - Environmental and Flight Safety Aspects of the Problem

Vortices in fluid and gas are very stable formations featuring a slow mass, momentum and energy exchange with surrounding atmosphere. The «closure» of vortices, on the one hand, facilitates their visualization and, on the other hand, results in accumulating and for long retaining hot engine exhaust gases entrained into the vortices in the stage of their formation in the near jet-vortex wake behind an aircraft. The later problem is closely related to the environmental impact of aviation, especially within airport areas and ozone layer of the Earth atmosphere. In this paper the problem of light scattering by particulates arising during water vapor condensation, droplet coagulation or breakdown is considered. Numerical results are presented of gasdynamic and optical properties of the aerosol-containing wakes of the Boeing-747-type aircraft and of the prospective Russian second-generation supersonic civil transport SST-2.