Computational Investigation of Varying Plate-Line Geometry and Placement on Wake Vortex Dissipation

One of the bottlenecks for the recent increase in air traffic density is near the airport, where wake vortices, bounded by the terrain, could easily rebound into the landing corridor and remain there for a long period of time while maintaining their strength. The threat of near-ground wake vortex could be mitigated by the plate-line technology, which places a series of thin plates across the landing corridor before the runway; the technology was shown to significantly reduce the time it takes for wake vortex dissipation. The current investigation aims to better understand factors such as plate dimension and lateral position influences on the generation of secondary vortex structure and ultimately the dissipation rate of a wake vortex pair. It is found that the wake dissipation could be sped up further by optimizing the lateral position of the plate relative to the obstacle-vortex contact location, while the height of the plate could be significantly reduced without noticeably affecting the performance of the obstacle set.