Quote:
Originally Posted by t vago
I've been re-thinking this idea. It's counterproductive to have a significant downward angle on the cap, without having similar angles on the sides of the bed. The downward angle is going to cause the top air to also move down at an angle, and it's going to react with the air moving on either side of the truck, and it's going to cause power-robbing vortices to form on either side of the truck's rear end. I've seen this happen with my own aerocap.
I'm going to design version 3 of my aerocap pretty soon, based off the master's Naval Post-Grad School paper that LT Williams wrote...
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc...c=GetTRDoc.pdf
I am going to do this because, using LT Williams' numbers, he would be able to get a 13% increase in fuel economy using only his aerocap. This is better than the 10% I am currently seeing with my version 2 aerocap.
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The Ford/Texas Tech 'aeroshell' with straight sides was good for 20% drag reduction and 10% mpg @ 55 mph.
My shell,with plan-taper gave 13% mpg,so reverse-engineering yields the 26% drag reduction.
So the numbers are pretty consistent.Members just need to decide how much money and human capital they're willing to invest in a project.