An aircraft wake vortex retrieval method that estimates the horizontal and vertical positions and radii-averaged circulations of wake vortices from lidar-measured Doppler spectra on a lateral range–height indicator is proposed. The method formulates relationships between state variables and measured Doppler spectra for each individual wake vortex and iteratively optimizes the state variables so as to match the measured Doppler spectra. Because the state variables consist of a position, the parameters of an assumed two-dimensional vortex model, and a local background wind, high retrieval accuracy is achieved without adverse influences from errors in the preestimation of position or background wind. The separate formulation of each wake vortex enables the method to flexibly handle nonideal cases, for example where only one wake vortex of a pair remains or a long-persistent wake vortex and a newly generated pair of wake vortices coexist on a single range–height indicator. The retrieval results were evaluated against reference flight data from 864 flights collected during a wake vortex observation campaign conducted by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency at Narita International airport. The evaluation was performed by an approach using self- and cross-evaluation models, which allowed the evaluation of a large number of retrievals considering time variation of the wake vortex parameters. As a result, the proposed method was found to retrieve horizontal position with a bias error of and a standard error of 4.8 m; vertical position with bias and standard errors of and 3.5 m, respectively; and radii-averaged circulation with bias and standard errors of and , respectively.
Aircraft Wake Vortex Retrieval Method on Lidar Lateral Range–Height Indicator Observation
AIAA Journal ; 55 , 7 ; 2269-2278
2017-04-11
10 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
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