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Old 09-07-2010, 12:40 PM   #125 (permalink)
RobertSmalls
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Neil,

I hear you anticipate a drag coefficient around 0.095 and a drag area of 2.5ft² for CarBEN.

Earlier I posted:
Quote:
Originally Posted by RobertSmalls View Post
The M-B Bionic concept illustrates that a blunt front is okay, but a low drag car needs to have a very small rear. That explains a large part of the difference between the Cd=0.095 clay model and the Cd=0.20 concept car, which had a relatively large rear. The rest may be due to adding door handles, wipers, ground clearance, and panel gaps. CarBEN's rear is much larger than that of the clay model. As a percentage of frontal area, it's somewhere between that of the Cd=0.25 Insight and the Cd=0.188 EV1.
I'd like to hear your thoughts on how much drag CarBEN's vortical wake will contribute, and how you can reduce the size of that wake.

Are you interested in looking for ways to reduce your frontal area? I see room to slice a foot out of the middle of the car in plan view, and the middle foot of CarBEN is by far the draggiest foot.

I'd appreciate it if you'd spell out your project goals (low cost, min Wh/mi, seats five, fun/awesome to drive, impressive to look at, fun to design and build, etc.), to make it possible for others to contribute to this open source project, or at least to better understand it.

If you have a .DXF solid model of the latest version, I'd like a copy.
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