Quote:
Originally Posted by t vago
I saw some interesting sights during this last winter snowstorm a few days ago. People around here generally don't brush off more than the bare minimum of snow from their cars, and of course they like to drive on the interstate with all of this snow blowing off.
On quite a few of these cars, I happened to see snow aerodynamically shape itself to the roofs of these cars, such that the roof was effectively raised a few inches. That makes me think that for maximum gain, maybe the leading edge of this template ought to be matched to the windsheild of a given vehicle, and then aero extensions ought to be built to match the template (even if it raises the roof a bit).
Then again, that may drop C(d) at the expense of increased frontal area. Just a thought...
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Here's something to consider.
*The lowest Cd for a streamline body of revolution in free-air is 0.04.
* The Template,in free-air,has Cd 0.04.
* When the Template is 'split' in ground-reflection it is Cd 0.07
* When the 'ground-clearance' is cut away from the 'half-body' the Cd is 0.08.
* When skinny wheels are added to it the Cd jumps to 0.12.
* When wheel fairings are arranged around the wheels/tires,the Cd drops to 0.089.
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All this is based on exhaustive wind tunnel research,at a cost of billions of dollars now.
It may not serve us to follow what the snow does,All this has been tested already ( yes aerodynamacists are that crazy!) to no avail.
It's taken me over 35 years to come up with a tool as simple as the Template,at a personal cost of tens of thousands of dollars.
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Smart money is on good science.