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Old 04-29-2015, 04:17 AM   #2 (permalink)
freebeard
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Yes—You're getting most of the Template.*

...except the most important thing—it's a half-body of revolution in section, IOW a half circle sitting on the ground. You've got a square. Consider these alternatives to the half-zepplin:



You are at A and you want to get to F. There are interesting alternatives for a hitch mount at G and H. No vortexes is better.

The payback for the added length is linear. 10% gets you 10% and so on. 10% gets you 5mpg. Or something; but a 100% boattail might get you 100% better mileage—40 to 80mpg is believable—but it's a lot of pain to drag one around, as you've seen. So you pick a percentage.

*What you've called "affected zone" is probably less meaningful than Fineness Ratio—the ration of length to maximum camber, which I think of as at 30%/70% of length. Nothing much happen before the point of stagnation: think about how water wraps around the bow of a ship.

Edit: These shapes aren't sliced with a ground plane, but should give the same Cd for a given cros-section.



The biggest difference is the rounded shapes have better cross-wind performance.

Last edited by freebeard; 04-29-2015 at 05:04 AM..
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