I found the following presentation useful in reinforcing some of the concepts I've read on this forum (though got a bit lost in the last quarter or so).
http://www.bakker.org/dartmouth06/engs150/11-bl.pdf
In other threads I've seen comments about achieve better milage figures after a clean/detail. How sensitive is turbulence and separation to surface finish, in objects of car/motorhome size? Roughly what sized Reynolds number is involved?
Whatever I build is going to be 'homebuilt', and I haven't been planning on having to get it mirror smooth! Motorhomes/caravans have windows on the sides, which involves surface irregularities of a few mm. I'm planning polycarbonate sealed solar panels on the top, which are of about 3mm thickness (1/8"). I was just planning on gluing them on as is, leaving the 3mm vertical edge around each panel.
Will these kind of surface imperfections have no/little effect, or be beneficially tripping the boundary layer and causing minor turbulence that assists laminar flow beyond that (like a golf ball, or slide 20 in that presentation link above), or just destroy laminar flow and mess up aero properties?