Quote:
Originally Posted by Varn
Interesting smoke around the beetle. A top down view would be interesting considering the external fenders.
Nice thing about the multiple lines is that you can see compression by noticing the spacing of the lines at the front of the car 
Since lowering the windshield might be prohibitive filling in front of there might be a start to lower the pressure over the roof of car. The smoke trail is moving upward at about 20 degrees.
On the 86 jetta the trunk lid is pretty high but still might be a bit low to be ideal. Thankfully it is squared and not rounded like the early model vw. unfortunately the front of the jetta is also very square. The hood angle is 7 degrees. |
I'm going to throw a caution-flag out on this image.I'm guessing that this is a 1/24-scale model in a student wind tunnel and they've slowed the air velocity down below that critical for proper Reynolds number to get a nice image but the boundary layer is laminar,not turbulent,and flow is separating prematurely.
Elsewhere there is a photo of a full-scale Beetle in the VW tunnel at critical Reynolds number and the flow is completely different!Flow is attached to the top of the backlight.
It changes the whole discussion!