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Old 11-20-2009, 10:06 PM   #94 (permalink)
Bicycle Bob
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Location: N. Saskatchewan, CA
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Very inspiring! Will we see little fairings behind the mud flaps, too? The thing about the concave rear is to encourage a single large vortex to form there. See the Cobra Coupe for a decent example.
Anyone else starting at CAD might want to do a scale model first with paper, to see how it all stiffens up when the shell is complete. Monocoques are inherently great structures, as long as the skin does not buckle. Modern plywood boats have happily dispensed with most of the traditional frame members, because 'glass taped corners are stronger than mid-panels anyway. While marine ply is sometimes worth the money, carefully selected 1/8" (3mm) door skins would make that curve very smoothly. Epoxy encapsulation would make it last.
For a Coroplast box, we can use two layers to get rid of most of the bulkheads needed to support a single skin. There are heavy guage panels available, but they are harder to curve smoothly. With two layers, having the whole inside of the 1st skin slit is no problem - just run beads of silicon to bond it to the inside layer. The very thick clear panels sometimes used for greenhouses could make a rather hazy but still useful rear window.
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