Atmospheric turbulence is a typical risk that threatens the flight safety of civil aviation aircraft. A method of estimating aircraft's vertical acceleration in turbulence is proposed. Based on the combination of wing and horizontal tail, the continuous change of aerodynamic force in turbulent flight is obtained by unsteady vortex ring method. Vortex rings are assigned on the mean camber surface to further improve the computing accuracy. The incremental aerodynamic derivatives of lift and

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... ng moment are developed, which can describe the turbulence effects on aircraft. Furthermore, a new acceleration-based eddy dissipation rate (EDR) algorithm was developed to estimate the turbulence severity. Compared with wind tunnel test data, the aerodynamic performance of the lifting surface was computed accurately. A further test on wing–tail combination showed that the computed pitching moment change due to control-surface deflections approaches the aircraft-modeling data. The continuous change of vertical acceleration at any longitudinal locations of aircraft is obtained in turbulent flight. Compared with traditional transfer function-based EDR algorithms, the proposed algorithm shows higher accuracy and stability. Furthermore, the adverse influence of aircraft maneuvering on EDR estimation is eliminated.