Quote:
Originally Posted by JasonG
Frank, doing the same thing, repeatedly, with variations is called proving a theorum in the scientific community. If an event is not repeatable across thed applied range, it cannot be peer reviewed and entered as valid.
If we are going to convince the general public and manufacturers that aero works, we need multiple test cases. They are finally sloping the rear of 'wagons', and adding small Kamms/wings to them as well.
Keep it up Varn (and everybody else) !
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Re: doing the same thing ad nauseum: it is true... and can be applied to, oh, HHO too, right? Certainly one is free to do whatever experiments one wants; it's their time. The first thing that always comes up is, is the experiment properly designed and executed so as to deliver trustworthy, repeatable results such that erroneous claims are not being made? That's really a lot tougher than the vast majority of us think. Testing something with, say, a potential 1% gain when the test itself has 2% undefined variability is problematic...
Mfgs don't need to be convinced aero works; hell, they're the ones that have decades of experience and billions of dollars invested in the tech, not us. What they need to be convinced of is aero sells and it appears at this time radical aero may not, while aero tweaking of the conventional may. The unfortunate reality is that oftentimes ultimate aero is achieved at the expense of some other desired quality (space efficiency, manufacturability, cost, compliance to current trends, etc.) so it becomes a balancing act. They are driven mainly by "the business case" that can be made for any of their decisions. Were the consumers in droves to give feedback that says aero and fuel efficiency is a top priority to them, we'd see a low Cd competition amongst the mfgs pretty quickly, and the motoring press would jump on board too.
Then it seems the trick would be to get customers to demand high fe and low Cd. My take on it is the customer pretty much doesn't care as long as their fuel expenses are a certain percentage of their budget or less.