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Old 03-13-2012, 01:57 PM   #7 (permalink)
ERTW
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Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Toronto
Posts: 130

Bu - '08 Chevrolet Malibu LS
90 day: 32.29 mpg (US)
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So my kitchen tap "wind tunnel" may not have been so accurate

I've been doing CFD on the Malibu's basic shape. It's just a prism, as opposed the the tapered shape of the real car, and my model has a perfectly flat bottom. GM's published Cd is 0.34. I got 0.327 - within a few %. It's not super accurate, and I think it can show very good trends. I think I can say that a full underbody is worth at least 13 counts.

I've been studying various approaches to lowering drag: spoilers, vortex generators, kamm backs etc. here are my results.
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