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Old 05-12-2013, 01:10 PM   #1 (permalink)
stillsearching
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Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Minnesota
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getting out of ground effect...

Reading various articles on how streamliners, when touching the ground, have worse fuel efficiency than they do in free air - ie http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1247946422 (ie the half body at ground plane is over 2x as bad as the streamliner in free air) and having seen a solar streamliner body design that I can't find a link to right now, but which had like a 0.09 coefficient of drag not by hugging the ground but by letting the air flow under it better (it may have been 12-15 inches up but it was also going very very slow like 20mph, i'd assume as speed goes up you'd need more clearance) i'm wondering at what point of height/speed/other factors it makes sense to start letting air flow under the vehicle again?

Low ground clearance is hard to drive with in a world of speed bumps and potholes. And some of my projects wanting to be based around pickups tend to sit up higher already. When is the belly pan and a lift better aero than a ground effects kit and lowering?

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