[ItsMyFirst]

Hi everyone.

A few days ago a post prompted me to register and get involved! Neat eh?

Well it was someone who had some time on his hands and a workstation with FEA modeling software. He has a RAV4 and did a few
calculations. From what I can see the image in the display looks simple enough to warrent using, maybe I'm not knowledgeable, a
photograph for the outline of a vehicle.

Then inputting the size of the vehicle would lend dimensions to the outline of your car.

Here' s a suggestion.
If we take a photo showing exactly a good outline (the ride height in the photo), the front (showing the total area ) of vehicle:

then an FEA software might be able to model the CD (wind drag) of the car.

This would be exciting. As I know many people are excited to try
adding air dams or boattails to their cars and trucks.

Wouldn't using this software (if it were available as an online application)
be simple? Or with enough testing maybe it would at least yeild data showing
improvements or losses.

Could it be made possible for us to purchase a license or a service run by someone here to input our vehicle photos and get the CD ( air drag)
value for the vehicle and then using the FEA determine how much an air dam and other mods would / might yeild.

For you who have the time actually run the vehicle with / without the mod and see if the FEA would save time and help speed development of accessories for the vehicle.

I can visualize a database of vehicles with the gains or loss from adding various mods or designs.

Each designer can quickly try their design with the FEA and then for
those who will real world test the results would show the correlation.
With that, even if the FEA was wrong, we could develop a formula to
show how wrong and where it's wrong. That way the right answer
can be had.

I can see in my mind's eye people quickly coming up with designs to
try an beat another designer's idea.

It would be a really SUPER group project and well that's why I registered.

I'd be willing to share my experience in science.
I'm a scientist with a background for 30 years in electronics and chemistry and optics. My work was with materials (of all kinds).
Since I retired at about 46 years old I've spent time researching things of interest to me.

I'd like to buy or build or mod some electric vehicles and start posting real
world data (see the RechargeIT Experiement)

See google for RechargeIT Experiement

I posted a short note in Aerodynamics mentioning that I was asking
if an online FEA application would work out for us. I didn't mean to
repost the same thread. Thanks

Andre