A380
Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Workload; Situational Awareness
ATC Issue All Types; Conflict Airborne Conflict; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Inflight Event / Encounter Wake Vortex Encounter
Air Traffic Control Issued New Clearance
Procedure
[A380] was cleared for the visual approach to [Runway] 18R when I was taking a briefing for the position. I heard the previous Controller give a speed of 180 to the marker. The trail aircraft was direct to the second intermediate fix for [Runway] 18R; slowed to 210. Traffic at the time was moderate; but I immediately had to begin slowing the trail aircraft since he was already 8 miles behind. I slowed the aircraft all the way back to 160 knots and gave 10-degrees left to try and make my 7 miles of wake. As I turned on final for the visual approach; I was at 6.98 miles. I tried to give an S-turn to the west; but it was too late; the plane was already in the wake on the inbound turn. I canceled the approach clearance and had him track the localizer inbound at 3;000 feet. As I was trying to get this whole situation figured out; the planes behind were compressing and I didn't have time to let LW1 [Local West 1] know that I was sending the trail aircraft around. LW1 was not pleased.I was instructed to take a position for a short hit toward the end of the arrival push to get my TOP up before my team brief. Arrival Radar did not need to be relieved at that time as the volume was diminishing shortly. I should have watched and let the previous controller work out the situation; but I didn't. I was subsequently relieved after 10 minutes on position; still trying to gather what was going on myself. In my opinion this is a horrible way to safely manage TOP and breaks. Don't page back for 10-20 minute hits during periods of elevated traffic. This places risk into the NAS.
D10 TRACON Controller reported losing minimum wake separation between an A380 and a trailing aircraft on arrival into DFW.