Decay of wake vortices of large aircraft

A brief summary of previous works is followed by an in-depth analysis of velocities, circulations, and decay histories of a number of trailing vortices generated by large aircraft during field tests in Memphis, Tennessee. The results suggest that the decay of trailing vortices is governed by the mutual straining of vortices; intermittent exchange of mass, momentum, and vorticity across the core boundary; rotational damping and restructuring of turbulence in the core; stretching of large turbulent structures, turbulent diffusion, and the interaction of oppositely signed vorticity in the overlapping regions of the vortex pair; and the draining of vorticity from the Kelvin oval.