Air-Wake Prediction Based Air-Vehicle Recovery Aids

Abstract

This report demonstrates the capability of the forward prediction of the properties of the arriving wind at a vessel for time intervals adequate to significantly aid in the recovery of a wide range of air vehicles onto vessels. For craft with flight decks sited in the fore part of the vessel it is adequate to simply predict the arriving wind. For the more difficult task of recovery to stern areas behind superstructure it is also necessary to predict either the explicit properties of the turbulent air-wake or else to predict some quality measure for the aid of recovery under the prevailing conditions. The approach is able to relate the trends in the short-term statistical properties of fluctuating airflow over the flight deck to the trends in the predicted arriving wind.