Quote:
Originally Posted by secaturbo
I would Not do the air dam. it will add frontal area to the car. your under tray is designed to allow air to pass efficiently enough. Wish could find the post that said this. Air dams are good if there is a lot of under car openings. You might want an air dam at the front and rear tires like the early Insights.
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Actually, the Prius has airdams on both front and rear tires too.
When Ford built the hydrogen 999 Bonneville car based on the Fusion, the engineers lowered the car to 50mm ground clearance (similar effect at the front as adding an airdam)--a modification they claimed lowered Cd by .08--and then added an entirely smooth belly pan (which reduced Cd another .01, they said). The Prius doesn't have anything near a perfectly smooth belly pan, and even if it did, based on their research, it could
potentially still benefit from an airdam.
If there's anything I've learned about aerodynamics from reading this site and other research, it's that almost nothing is a hard-and-fast rule, and everything should be experimented. The Prius, for example, should have too steep an angle at the rear for attached flow, according to the ideal template, yet the flow is indeed attached and the resulting Cd is low because of it. So, the only way to find out is to try it. If it doesn't help, I can always take it off.