Student Seminar: Hossein Amini Kafiabad
Lagrangian Detection of Aerial Turbulence for Landing Aircraft
Our very own Hossein Amini Kafiabad will be presenting a talk on “Lagrangian Detection of Aerial Turbulence for Landing Aircraft” on Wednesday September 26 at 2:35pm in Burnside 934. His abstract follows:
Recent studies have shown that aerial disturbances affecting landing aircraft have a coherent signature in the Lagrangian aerial particle dynamics inferred from ground-based lidar scans. Specifically, attracting Lagrangian Coherent Structures (LCSs) mark the intersection of localized material upwelling with the cone of the lidar scan. Here we test the detection power of LCSs on historical landing data and corresponding pilot reports of disturbances from Hong Kong International Airport. We find that a specific LCS indicator, the gradient of the Finite-Time Lyapunov Exponent (FTLE) field along the landing path, is a highly efficient marker of turbulent upwellings. In particular, projected FTLE gradients closely approach the efficiency of the wind-shear alert system currently in operation at the airport, even though the latter system relies on multiple sources of data beyond those used in this study. This shows significant potential for the operational use of FTLE gradients in the real-time detection of aerial turbulence over airports.