THE EFFECTS OF AIRCRAFT TRAILING VORTICES ON HOUSE ROOFS

This paper describes work carried out by the Building Research Establishment to investigate the phenomenon of aircraft trailing vortices and their effect on the roofs of domestic dwellings. As part of this investigation the roof of a house close to runway 27R at Heathrow Airport was instrumented to detect vortices. Measurements of pressure and velocity were carried out for nearly 3000 h during a 12 month period in 1991/92. During this period 399 vortex strikes were detected on the test house giving an average strike rate of 1.5/day. The majority of these strikes produced pressures within the range +/- 150 Pa. On 6 occasions suctions exceeded -500 Pa with a maximum suction of -1190 Pa (-25 lb/ft2). Over 70% of all vortex strikes occurred when the ambient mean wind speed was below 5 m/s. Peak instantaneous tangential velocities of up to 40 m/s were recorded at the anemometer location.