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Turbulators and stall strips
Hi Ironside,
Very interesting.
Where on Royce's site is the discussion behind this image? I look at his site periodically but it is not well designed as far as back links are concerned. I finally found the image but there is no discussion with that image that I can find.
His rope is a "turbulator" (see Wikipedia subject "Turbulator", I can't post links yet) than a stall strip I referenced. The image Sheepdog helpfully provided explains the stall strip very well since it comes from a hidden link in a flight school training course. The end result may well be the same and complementary to a stall strip.
A stall strip only becomes "active" (turbulence producing) when the local airflow angle exceeds half the apex angle of the stall strip. It is normally placed at the stagnation point in normal flight so it is not drag producing. I can imagine somewhat more complex stall strip designs to produce varying degrees of turbulence. I'm sure the real aerodynamicists could tell us a lot more than us arm chair types.
In a private correspondence with Craig Vetter, he said a short fence on the tail of his streamliner was suggested by Tom Finch of Tailwind trailers which he reports has some effect in reducing side wind sensitivity. Craig said he was going to try it on the nose section at my suggestion. I have not heard from him yet.
A fence would be the extreme degenerative version of a stall strip. It would cause turbulence at any non-zero (direct head on) local airflow angle.
There is hope for decreasing side wind sensitivity for streamliners. I am awaiting more reasoned discussion on this subject. I'm not sure how this forum works in regard to renaming thread titles or if it can except by moderators.
-- Teri
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