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Comment by phumbe

It's helpful to think of an aircraft's wake in two parts.

The wing is deflecting air downward to provide lift; this creates a volume of downward-moving air behind the aircraft.

There's higher pressure under the wing and lower pressure on top, so air from below tries to get above the wing at the wingtips. This causes circulatory motion, yielding wingtip vortices (see my top-level comment for some visualizations).

parent phumbe 9 years ago

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