The animation displays the influence of airport-building induced turbulence on an aircraft during a crosswind landing. The animation data were derived using the parallelized large-eddy simulation model PALM, simulating a neutrally stratified flow over an artificial building, with a mean flow from the west (perpendicular to the obstacle and the runway) and a free stream wind of 20 m/s. Visualized is the crosswind variation as difference between the instantaneous and the mean wind field, with positive values in red and negative values in blue. The building is 25 x 250 x 40 m³ (length x width x height) and displayed in white. The animation spans over 9 minutes with parts accelerated by a time-lapse factor of 5, and was created with the visualization software VAPOR. The total PALM model domain had a size of 4 x 2 x 2 km³ in streamwise, spanwise and vertical direction. The displayed domain extends over 500 x 1000 x 200 m³. During the last 20 seconds of the simulation, the crosswind variation encountered by the aircraft during its final approach is tracked and dispalyed on the flightpath of the aircraft as well as in a temporal history plot in the lower left corner of the screen. The aircraft has a ground speed of 70 m/s. Its flightpath is 450 m downstream from the building. The airport building generates strong turbulence with resulting crosswind variations of up to 10 m/s. The aircraft encounters these strong crosswind variations within a few seconds. During the flight, the crosswind drops from more than 15 m/s down to almost 0 m/s. The animation can be divided into two major parts. The pre-flight part of the animation starts with an aerial view onto the entire airport area and shows several perspectives of the scene with slow camera moves. The flight part shows the final approach of the aircraft. |