An experimental Airbus concept shows airplanes flying in formation to save fuel. This concept carefully capitalizes on wake turbulence, which engineers have fought against for more than a century.

aircraft, part of the Autonomous Formation Flight (AFF) project based at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif., flew the mission in early December. During the 96-minute flight, the ...

Birds are the undisputed masters of aerodynamics. No matter how many supercomputers and wind tunnels scientists throw at solving flight’s thorny calculations, they’ll never match the perfection of ...

It's common to see line-shaped clouds in the sky, known as contrails, trailing behind the engines of a jet airplane. What's not always visible is a vortex coming off of the tip of each wing--like two ...

When people want to talk about something unpleasant, they often invent nicer-sounding phrases to disguise what's really going on. "Wake turbulence" is the kind of term that can bring to mind vague, ...

The study of vortex dynamics in fluid mechanics is critical for both advancing aeronautical design and minimising flow-induced hazards. At its core, vortex dynamics examines the formation, evolution, ...