Quote:
Originally Posted by The Toecutter
I've been putting together an electric assist velomobile with the goal of approaching less than 10 Wh/mile at 30 mph on flat ground with the rider pedaling with an input of 100W. I want to make sure that I have the body streamlined to a decent degree. The first body, depicted in this post, is being made out of corrugated plastic. It is not good at making compound curves, and generally only likes to be folded in one direction. I came up with the design below based on the Rumpler Tropfenwagen and the lakester salt flats racers, with a bit of influence by the LeMans velomobile. After that is a picture of the trike as it exists today. Open wheels are a necessity in order to fit it in and out of my doorway, and the body width is as narrow as possible while still providing clearance for the steering bars and without the wheels scrubbing. I estimate a frontal area of 0.6 m^2, but I am hoping to get a 0.25 Cd or below. Better shapes will be built after this one, but this will be the starting point.
The drawing of the body is done to scale. 1 square in the blue grid is 100 mm.
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How do the open wheels help with the doorway?
The second time I built a Coroplast body, I used mostly "Fine Flute" grade, which is lighter, and built Coroplast box beams for structure, with a few wooden blocks to take the mounting screws and some little bits of fiberglass in tricky spots.
For covering curved seams in Coroplast almost invisibly, I recommend 3M #190. It will stretch like electrical tape, but then not shrink back.