The formation and forecasting of condensation trails behind modern aircraft
✍ Scribed by P D Ferris
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2007
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 422 KB
- Volume
- 3
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1350-4827
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The formation of a condensation trail behind an aircraft gives away its presence. Despite the current use of radar for aircraft detection, contrail formation is still important to military aviation.
Seeing a contrail only requires the unaided eye. The theory of contrail formation for a dry environment, using values of engine-dependent variables appropriate to modern jet aircraft, gives values of the critical temperature for contrail formation. These form a line nearly parallel to, but colder than, the M I N T R A line on a tephigram. These values though, do not allow for the effect of environmental humidity, which may be significant at the levels where aircraft fly. A new forecasting technique is proposed which involves determining the exact critical temperature value. This can be done using a suitable contrail formation graph or with a tephigram, finding the necessary correction to the M I N T R A temperature. I f the atmospheric temperature is colder than this critical temperature, a contrail should be forecast to form.