An Experimental Investigation of Wing Trailing Vortex Formation
Abstract
The incompressible flowfield in the vicinity of a lifting rectangular finite wing is investigated experimentally to ascertain the nature and detailed characteristics of the formation and early development of a trailing vortex. The apparatus was designed and fabricated to facilitate a direct comparison of real flow data with existing theories and flow models. The inboard potential flow region was observed to exhibit the simplifying characteristic of a spanwise cross-flow velocity component which is independent of the surface normal coordinate. As a result, a possible ambiguity in the determination of the stream-wise vorticity component was removed. Graphs of the near-surface (bound) vorticity distribution are presented along with a map of Prandtl bound vortex filaments. The associated bound circulation function could be expressed approximately as the product of two separable functions of the planform spatial coordinates. Measurements at the wing trailing edge are employed to show that the properly non-dimensionalized characteristic vorticity distribution in this region is independent of angle of attack.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 1976
- Accession Number
- ADA030729
Entities
People
- Michael S. Francis
Organizations
- Air Force Research Laboratory