Wheel skirts for the aerodynamically minded

[Daox]

So I've been thinking about the rear wheel skirts a lot lately. How to mount them? What material to use? Even how to make them as aerodynamic as possible? This is what this thread will discuss.

As with most cars that don't come with skirts stock, the rear wheel tends to stick out enough or is at least close enough to the outer face of the wheel well that when making skirts they need to buldge out so that they clear the wheel/tire. So, if we need a buldge out of the car, it should be as aerodynamic as possible, right? We are increasing frontal area after all. So, I think the wheel skirt should be shaped in the 'half teardrop' to be most aerodynamic. This obviously won't be easy to make, but it makes sense, right?

Here is a rough 3d model that I drew up of what the skirt may look like. I thought about posting pictures, but that just wouldn't do justice.

Skirt viewer download

[AndrewJ]

eeeww, DOS?

you know that we mac-centric folks are just SOL on that one.

I get what you're saying about making the rear part of the bulge more streamlined, but in a lot of cases you're going to be trying to taper that into a rapidly disappearing rear bumper. In the case of my car, there's not much area left after the wheel well to make that transition.

Plus, if you do manage to keep the flow from seperating there, then it should have a much easier time working it's way back around the bulge, but only tuft testing would show for sure.

[Daox]

Mac users...

If you really wanna see it you should be able to DL the viewing program here:
http://www.edrawingsviewer.com/MAC_Viewer.html

And the skirt file is in the thread below.

[Daox]

I renamed the file to skirt.zip. Download it and rename it to skirt.eprt and it should work.

[SVOboy]

I run dosbox on my macbook to play old dos games, woo.

on the skirts!

[MetroMPG]

No way you can post this as pics? Or an animated gif? YouTube?

[Daox]

Its really hard to see the contour of the model with just pictures. I'll see what I can do.

[Daox]

Okay, I made an AVI file. However, I'm at work and they block youtube so I just put it on my site for download.

Skirt AVI

[AndrewJ]

I've been thinking about something like this for my car, it would ideally do two things:
1.) help smooth the flow around the bulge of the skirt
2.) smooth the transition from the tire to the rear bumper (in effect a boattail)



and it should make the rest of the rear bumper act as a diffuser, sort of like a 2nd gen Prius



or (more dramatically) a Skyline GTR

[MetroMPG]

Sorry to be a pest, Daox, but the AVI is empty when I view it (just a grey screen).