My brother's got a Honda Ridgeline that he uses for his HVAC business:
(He refused to buy a white panel van like everybody else.)
I noticed it had what looked like VG's on its door mirrors, as you can see in this pic:
At first I thought they were just a useless neato! design element, until I did a bit of digging and found
this article:
Quote:
Another cool feature on the Ridgeline is a "vortex generator" on top of the side mirrors. Don't be fooled by the fancy name. It's nothing more than little plastic ridges molded on top of the mirrors. As the air flows across the mirror, the ridges help to redirect the flow away from the windows.
"We were playing around in the wind tunnel and put some clay on the tops of the mirrors to see what would happen," Keller explained [Ridgeline's assistant large project leader for design]. "The ridges help to hold down wind noise and keep the cabin quieter."
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I'm surprised that something as little as these bumps does anything meaningful, aerodynamically. I suppose the mirrors must be out in "clean" flow, so the boundary layer is very thin where the bumps are. Otherwise they'd have no effect.
FYI, they're raised maybe 4 mm. The length of the leading edge is maybe 5-6 mm. I should have put a coin there for reference when I snapped the pics.