Aerodynamic Loading Induced on a Two-Dimensional Wing by a Free Vortex in Incompressible Flow

Extract

Practical problems often arise in which the aerodynamic loadings on wings and fins, due to nearby free vortices, are required. For example, aerodynamic loads on helicopter blades are affected by the tip vortices which are continuously being shed and which lie beneath the rotor plane. And vortices shed from the nose of an aircraft fuselage can induce significant side loads on a fin.

The estimation of the aerodynamic load distribution on a moving wing in the neighbourhood of a free vortex (whose axis is primarily in the free stream direction) is an interesting problem which, as far as the author is aware, has not been discussed previously in the literature. Standard techniques for conventional linearised wing theory cannot be applied directly to this problem because the trailing vorticity shed from the wing trailing edge is affected by the flow field of the free vortex and so the mathematical application of the Kutta trailing edge condition is more complex.